4.8.2. Features

♤ They occur in shallow tropical areas where the sea water is clean, clear and warm.

♤ The coral reef cover in Indian waters is roughly estimated upto 19,000 sq. Km.

♤ Coral reefs are one of the most productive and complex coastal ecosystems with high biological diversity.

♤ The high productivity is owing to the combination of its own primary production and support from its surrounding habitat.

♤ Reef building corals are a symbolic association of polyps (coral animals) and ‘zooxanthellae’ (the microscopic algae)

♤ The corals are generally slow growing colonies of animals while zooxanthellae are fast growing plants.

♤ Even though corals live in nutrient poor waters, their capability to recycle the scarce nutrients (by the whole nutrient community) is enormous.

♤ In coral reef ecosystem, many invertebrates, vertebrates, and plants live in close association to the corals, with tight resource coupling and recycling, allowing coral reefs to have extremely high productivity and biodiversity, such that they are referred to as ‘the Tropical Rainforests of the Oceans’.