Remarkable Reefs
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What makes coral reefs comparable to rainforests?
Did you know that coral reefs are often described as the rainforests of the sea? They support around a third of all marine life visible to the naked eye, from jellyfish and fish to crabs, marine mammals and seaweeds. But reefs are also extraordinarily rich in life that we can't see. A new study recently published in the journal Nature shows that living reefs... host previously unknown biomolecules with real potential for future medicine and biotechnology. The research involved scientists at the University of Galway, including Professor Olivier Thomas. We spoke with Olivier and we asked him why these reef communities are so important.
You have been doing work on coral reefs and they in fact have often been called the rainforests of the sea. Now, mind you, I would have thought great bodies of kelp would look more like a rainforest, but they're called the rainforest because they support such a huge amount of marine life. Now, are these warm coral reefs you've been working on in Galway or are cold coral reefs? Or can you tell me what sort of coral reefs have you been working on in the first place?
Yeah, so that's interesting. Mainly we're working on warm coral reefs in the Pacific Ocean, but also the Caribbean. But it's true that there's also cold coral reefs actually in the territory of Ireland, in the deep ocean. So we worked also on that, but mainly the activities on the warm coral reefs indeed, in the Pacific especially.
So what you've been looking at are these reefs that are biodiversity hotspots. So what do you actually do? I mean, do you go there and take samples or tell us how you have discovered their hotspots? And are they hotspots for genetic or are they hotspots for species or are they hotspots for communities?
What are the recent discoveries about coral reef biodiversity?
Can you tell us more about the biological hotspots that these warm coral reefs are?
Yeah, so indeed there are hotspots of diversity, these warm coral reefs. So that's now 10 years we've built a big consortium with people in France, with the Tara people in France, but not only, Switzerland, Germany, America and Australia, where we really use expedition, develop expeditions in the Pacific to really study the diversity actually present in the coral reefs in the Pacific. So you are right to mention these different types of diversity. So we mean genetic diversity indeed. That's what we studied in this particular article, but also biodiversity in terms of species, which is certainly very, very important. As you said, these coral reefs, they host a lot of marine life, all types of marine life coming from the fishes, of course, but not only.
So this is all types of diversity, I would say, but involving, of course, the communities as well, because they live from these coral reefs and all the resources they provide.
Well, the coral reefs themselves, the actual coral structures are part of a living organism in the first place. And then the reefs then constructed by these living organisms are then habitat for all the different varieties of animals that you've been speaking of today. So can you tell us more about how the actual coral reefs themselves are formed in the first instance?
Yeah, so that's very important to make a difference between the coral reef and the coral species indeed, okay? So the animal coral is indeed an animal, right? So the reef is all the resources, the marine life that inhabits this reef, right? But they're building corals. So that means that they are building an entire ecosystem over kilometres of underwater life. life, I would say. And then this is an animal living in close relationship with the zooxanthellae, so that's already a close association. And this allows actually other animals to live and thrive in this actually quite poor, in terms of nutrients, ocean.
So these reefs then are in these warm oceans and they're being greatly impinged now by climate change, by the change in the pH in the oceans. And if the corals themselves cannot survive, if they become bleached and the animals die that make them, the whole ecosystems are in trouble as well.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What makes coral reefs comparable to rainforests?
0:00–1:52
2
What are the recent discoveries about coral reef biodiversity?
1:52–6:20
3
What types of coral reefs are being studied and where?
6:20–9:20
4
How are coral reefs identified as biodiversity hotspots?
9:20–17:16
5
How do coral reefs support diverse marine life?
17:16–18:01