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Feeding a cold water coral reef
A new study by SAMS researchers, in collaboration with the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, provides a tantalising glimpse into the interplay between cold-water corals and their physical habitat on the UK’s only known inshore cold-water coral reef.
Little is known about how these reefs are fuelled with food and this study reveals two distinct and predictable supply mechanisms to the corals. Firstly, the reefs are subjected to a tidally driven downwelling of surface water, which brings both food and warmer waters from the surface. In addition, a second mechanism consisted of particles delivered horizontally by water flow.
Professor Tony Larkum, Associate Editor of Limnology and Oceanography, writes:
“This study provides, for the first time, important clues as to how such communities depend strongly on the interplay between water flow and bottom topography to supply the food particles and larvae on which these communities depend.”