‘Mother’ reefs give life to neighbours

Abstract

Coral reefs activity was spotted from space after Dionysios Raitsos at Plymouth Marine Laboratory in the UK and his colleagues studied satellite images of ocean currents in the Red Sea from 1992 to 2012. Identifying and protecting mother reefs in the Red Sea and elsewhere could be the most effective way to conserve remote reefs that are receivers rather than propagators of life, he says. So strong and fast were some currents that they could sweep larvae between the flanks of the Red Sea--an average distance of around 280 kilometers--in just two weeks. This allows life to spread, says Raitsos, as larvae and eggs can survive for that long.