Corals of the Dark and Deep

Just for Fun:

look on my homepage ( http://home.att.net/~david.bump ) for a link to Hot Cereal, a silly story that has many variations which you can explore by deciding what happens next at the end of almost every page... except for the ending pages, of course. I’ve also put up a page of links.

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Now, for some thoughts on Science News, 8/7/2004, p. 88, in the article "Corals Without Boarders: It’s cold, dark, and there’s no help from live-in algae".

Researchers look at corals that live in waters much deeper and colder than we usually think. They’ve actually been known for a long time, "but since the late 1940s" they haven’t gotten much attention.

Although "researchers calculated" in one area "coral structure represents some 8000 years of growth," that’s probably based on unjustified uniformitarian assumptions. These corals may be relevant to certain questions about fossil corals in ways that may be helpful to creationists. Besides, some of this information should be fascinating to anyone interested in biology.

"Some of the species, in fact, cohabitate with symbiotic algae in the shallows but survive on their own in water 40 m or deeper.... The deepest report comes from 6328 m." It seems to me such flexibility could affect the interpretation of the fossil record, especially in cases of fossil forms that are now extinct. "Some of these corals reach 35 m in height."

"Although the larva of" this species "generally settle on surfaces firmer than sand, the tops of these mounds bristle with it."

In the Amazing Diversity of Life category: living alongside these corals are "unusual neighbors, little-known creatures called xenophyophores" and each one "looks like a grainy version of the irregular sponges sold in bed-and-bath shops." What’s amazing about them is that they are really "unusually large, unicellular organisms" that in this one area "can reach 20 cm in diameter." Hard to imagine a one-celled animal that would be a handful.

It’s also interesting to note that even in these deep, dark waters a lot of the corals appear in "Easter-that colors."


Until Next Time,

David Bump
Philippians 3: 13 Brethren, I
count not myself to have
apprehended: but [this] one thing
[I do], forgetting those things
which are behind, and reaching
forth unto those things which are
before, 14 I press toward the
mark for the prize of the high
calling of God in Christ Jesus.

http://home.att.net/~david.bump