The Corals - The reason for their colors

Welcome to the post nº5 of El Coral blog, in which we will continue to talk about coral.

Coral, corallo in Italian, can have a great variety of colours, as we said in the last post, now I am going to explain why.
The same as people, coral has cells that protect theirselves from sun intensity and UV-radiation, in relation to this its colour and tone will be different. It depends of which pigment take on their own tissue or to the algae one that live in symbiosis with them, it can change in each case due to the enormous diversity of corals.

Algae determine where corals are located, so they are very important. Corals which live in symbiosis with them need the algae for being nourished and live (and vice versa) and tend to be placed in clear shallow-water for receive the sunlight. However other corals that don’t require algae for survive can inhabit until 3000 metres depth.


In this way, as we told in the last post, coral can have many colours, from red (the most common and wanted), to pink, orange, yellow, white, blue, violet, green, brown and black. Occasionally this may can change and some people think that happens when coral dies. Well, even though this is true, it isn’t a general rule.
Sometimes coral can change the colour because it is getting used to the ultraviolet light intensity and its pigments, just as ours, adapt to this. So coral is able to satisfy nutritional and protective necessities of its colony.

And for the moment we have already talk enough about coral, but maybe it will appear new curiosities.

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We wait for you on our next post and don’t forget to have a look to our jewels!