Web exclusive: Coral reefs – look closer
The reef is full of life, none more obvious than sharks, whales and turtles but look closer and there’s a hidden world. In fact for every vertebrate you see on the reef, there are twenty times more invertebrates that are not always so easy to spot.
Even a single coral head can be home to hundreds of invertebrates: barnacles, nudibranchs, crabs, shrimps. Watch out for the gall crab, entombed within the coral with only the tiniest of openings through which it can feed and mate.
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