Coral reefs are aragonite structures produced by living organisms. In most reefs the predominant organisms are colonial cnidarians that secrete an exoskeleton of calcium carbonate. The accumulation of this skeletal material, broken and piled up by wave action and bioeroders, produces massive calcareous formations that make ideal habitats for living corals and a great variety of other animal and plant life.
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Coral reefs are aragonite structures produced by living organisms. In most reefs the predominant organisms are colonial cnidarians that secrete an exoskeleton of calcium carbonate. The accumulation of this skeletal material, broken and piled up by wave action and bioeroders, produces massive calcareous formations that make ideal habitats for living corals and a great variety of other animal and plant life.
Formations
- Fringing reef – a reef that is directly attached to a shore or borders it with an intervening shallow channel or lagoon.
- Barrier reef – a reef separated from a mainland or island shore by a deep lagoon (see Great Barrier Reef).
- Patch reef – an isolated, often circular reef, usually within a lagoon or embayment.
- Apron reef – a short reef resembling a fringing reef, but more sloped; extending out and downward from a point or peninsular shore.
- Bank reef – a linear or semi-circular shaped-outline, larger than a patch reef.
- Ribbon reef – a long, narrow, somewhat winding reef, usually associated with an atoll lagoon.
- Atoll reef – a more or less circular or continuous barrier reef extending all the way around a lagoon without a central island.
- Table reef – an isolated reef, approaching an atoll type, but without a lagoon.
BVI salts ponds were all shallow and mostly hypersaline and their waters were generally well mixed. They exhibited large variations in salinity, both temporally and spatially among ponds. -http://www.biology-online.org/
Distribution
Coral reefs are either restricted or absent from the west coast of the Americas, as well as the west coast of Africa. This is due primarily to upwelling and strong cold coastal currents that reduce water temperatures in these areas.Nybakken, James. 1997. Marine Biology: An Ecological Approach. 4th ed. Menlo Park, CA: Addison Wesley. Corals are also restricted from off the coastline of South Asia from Pakistan to Bangladesh. They are also restricted along the coast around north-eastern South America and Bangladesh due to the release of vast quantities of freshwater from the Amazon and Ganges Rivers respectively.Fact: date=December 2007
