Deep-Sea Corals Glow to Survive in the Ocean’s Darkness
New research shows corals can re-emit sunlight as a red-orange glow.
Most types of coral depend on the sun to survive, and employ symbiotic algae to churn light into food. This gets more difficult in deep water, and corals that live in these areas have an elegant way of making due with the dimness: They make their own light.
New research shows that (which is not the same as , another way that organisms produce light). A published in the journal shows that this red-orange light can penetrate more deeply within the coral than blue light, and helps algae therein to photosynthesize and produce chemical energy. The coral apparently employs this trick to get even more energy out of the little light that reaches the deep sea.
