What makes coral reefs colorful?
Coral's Color Crew
What makes coral reefs colorful?
You're snorkeling above a coral reef, and it's like someone spilled a paint box underwater. Electric blues, hot pinks, neon yellows, deep purples—a garden of color that shouldn't exist under the waves. What's going on down there?
Here's the first surprise: coral isn't a plant. It's an animal—thousands of tiny animals called polyps, actually, living together in one rocky apartment building. Each polyp is smaller than your pinky nail, sitting in its own little cup of limestone it built itself.
