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	• Science Desk >> ATW -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Coral Have you ever been to a coral reef? Well maybe you had better go soon, because before you know it, they may be gone... Why? Well the culprit lies in a phenomenon known as Coral Bleaching...but first a little bit about corals. Believe it or not corals are animals closely related to jellyfish. Picture a jellyfish with it’s tentacles hanging down…flip it over, plop it on the bottom and you have an animal known as a sea amenity that looks like this. Now lets take that sea amenity and squish it real small and build a limestone skeleton around the outside of it and you have a coral reef. A coral reef is literally an apartment complex for millions of these coral animals. A green Algae known as zooanthellae live inside each coral, they absorb the corals waste while performing photosynthesis which produces sugar that nourishes the coral. Now here's the problem over the last one hundred years we have documented an increase in the temperature of the oceans. It turns out that the zooanthellae like it a little bit cooler than it is today and they stop functioning. Waste now accumulates in the coral; the coral sickens spits out the Z and becomes bleached. It loses its color and its source of food. A bleached coral is a sick coral. Bleaching is a natural process but what is not natural is the rate which coral bleaching is occurring. Coral reefs are important because they protect shorelines and provide habitats for many organisms. We need to protect our corals by creating marine parks in places like the Great Barrier Reef and limit greenhouse gas emissions through reduced fossil fuel burning...you can learn more about coral reefs at the ATW website at atwonline.org. That's it from the Science Desk. More Information Learn more about the Great Barrier Reef: http://www.gbrmpa.gov.au/ Learn more about coral bleaching: http://www.marinebiology.org/coralbleaching.htm To see some awesome images of the coral kingdom check out NOAA’s photo library: http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/reef NOAA’s coral reef highlights: http://www.coralreef.noaa.gov/ © 2004 WXXI-TV/ Assignment: The World. All Rights Reserved.