Category: Coral Reef Species & Ecology

I recently heard from my sister that my niece is able to identify brain coral when she sees it in pictures. I know we spend a lot of time talking about things in the ocean, but it always impresses me when she can name specific animal species like that. This conversation also made me realize how few coral species I can identify by sight. Since coral can be tricky to identify - especially from a distance, this section focuses on broader categories or groupings of coral. Learning to identify which group a coral belongs to should make it easier to remember it's specific features so we can look it up later on.

My niece is at the age where she's asking lots and lots of questions. She's especially interested in learning about how different animal young are born. She recently asked me about baby fish and I'll admit I was stumped. So I had to do some research to answer her questions. I love it when she thinks of these great questions! Taking that line of questioning into account, I decided that the next section for my coloring book should be all about coral babies would be a fun thing to learn - for me as well as my niece!

I've decided to add a section to my coloring book about coral. This decision came about while I was talking to my mom (who is going to be joining us on the upcoming snorkeling trip) and telling her about some exciting new study on coral I had read. She stopped me to ask, "So why is coral in trouble right now? I know that it is, but I'm not really sure why." As I began to explain what coral bleaching is, I quickly realized I needed to pause and first cover some coral basics so we could have a common understanding to build on. This section of the coloring book is intended to help give my neice and the rest of my family (and anyone else who's interested) some common knowledge about coral so we can talk about all the problems facing coral right now.