Warm and translucent —the Coral Reef Ocean is home to many sea creatures. Also called the “underwater oasis”, coral reefs are home to brightly colored fish, other tiny sea creatures which make their home within corals, and corals in a spectacular kaleidoscope of colors. 

Splendid garden eel　



Spotted garden eel

Range：Nansei Islands, Philippine, Maldives

Range：From Indian Ocean to West Pacific Ocean

Garden eels live in the sand in a coral reef environment. They can grow up to 30 cm in length but half of their bodies are usually buried in their burrows in the sand. They eat plankton floating around them. They live in groups, but sometimes a fight occurs between two garden eels within the same group.

Benefits of Coral Reefs

Although coral reefs cover only 0.2% of the total area of the ocean, they are home to 25% of all marine life, being biodiversity hotspots. A coral reef is a rich ecosystem and gives invaluable benefits to not only sea creatures which live there but also humans: for instance, researchers have found that a kind of soft finger corals (Sinularia sp.) contains a substance called “acyl spermidine” in its body -- a substance that has anticancer effects and is 170 times more potent than traditional anticancer drugs. Another way which coral reefs benefit humans is that they act as natural breakwaters reducing the impact of sea surges caused by strong storms like typhoons.   Recent study shows that they can also absorb/control up to 65-70% of carbon dioxide (CO2) on earth, meaning that they are playing an important role (possibly more important than tropical rain forests) in preventing global warming.

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