Sessile animals are even easier to take pictures of

Yup, these are animals. No feet, no eyes, no fur, pretty unstimulating social lives, and yet they fit the definition of the animal kingdom: heterotrophic, multicellular, etc.

Coral are sessile animals which means they don’t move. They do have mouths which they use to filter food from the surrounding water, but they also get much of their food from a symbiotic relationship with algae. So, basically, the coral just sit in one place their whole life, look pretty, and food is brought straight to them. Do you know anyone like that?

The coral and the algae together form a reef that is the habitat for thousands of species. Algae provides most of the food and coral does a nice job providing shelter. The research I am doing here in the Bahamas involves tracking the coral populations to see whether they are indeed bleaching and declining. So the ecologists who are in charge of the project are teaching us how to identify and assess various coral.

Here are a few of the coral we’ve seen. Yea sessile animals! I keep trying to take pictures of fish and they have no skills whatsoever in terms of posing. Coral on the other hand know exactly what it means to sit for a picture.

Smooth Brain Coral. Pretty perfect name eh?

Sea Fan: a type of soft coral.

Dead Man’s Fingers: this one looks a bit bleached in the picture, but it’s not, it was much more purple in person.