But more than a decade of mapping and exploration "revealed one of the largest deep-sea coral reef habitats found to date anywhere in the world," NOAA Ocean Exploration operations chief Kasey ...

According to a study published February 26 in the journal Nature Communications, about 25 percent of coral reef’s health is dependent on sea cucumbers that keep the reefs clean. [Related ...

It tells of a time 125,000 years ago, when a modest increase in Earth’s temperatures caused ice sheets to melt and global sea levels to surge. The height of the coral — which can grow only ...

The whole population of black sea urchins, a species known for helping keep coral reefs healthy in the waters also known as the Gulf of Eilat, was wiped out over a couple months, according to a ...

Black sea urchins feed on the algae that grows on the reef. Bronstein said they’re sometimes called the gardeners of the sea for that reason. Algae competes with coral for sunlight.

She was diving for samples off the Florida Keys, and the thicket of elkhorn coral below looked brown, not the stark white that would indicate bleaching from the record-breaking sea temperatures in ...

Ocean heat in the Coral Sea is at its highest in four centuries, scientists report in the Aug. 8 Nature. The researchers drilled into coral skeletons from in and around the region and analyzed the ...