Study says coral can 'talk'? It's a marine rainforest that needs protection, but it's not a plant?

Is coral a plant or an animal? It has been debated for thousands of years.

Theophrastus, a student of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, referred to coral as "korallion" in a book of stones, implying that it was a mineral.

According to Pliny the Elder, an ancient Roman naturalist, coral is neither a plant nor an animal and should belong to the third group of organisms.

The French and Latin names of the fishes of the Marseilles region, published by Petrus Gyllius in 1535, copied Pliny's (Pliny) setting and introduced the concept of the third group of organisms.

And in the Babylonian Talmud, corals were again placed on the list of trees.

Until the 18th century, the Swedish scientist Linnaeus again classified it as a rock plant. But eventually, also William Herschel revealed the true nature of coral with a microscope, determining that coral has a thin cell membrane characteristic of animals.

The body of a coral consists of two germ layers: the cell layer on the outside is called the ectoderm; the cell layer on the inside is called the endoderm. Between the inner and outer germ layers, there is very thin, no cellular structure of the mesocosm layer. Food enters through the mouth, and food residues are discharged from the mouth. These animals have no head and trunk, no nerve center, and only a diffuse nervous system. When stimulated by the outside world, the whole animal body has a response.

Because corals provide a habitat for a variety of plants and animals, coral reefs are often referred to as the rainforests of the ocean. Given the importance of corals to the ocean, Camila Rimoldi Ibanez, a student researcher at South Florida State University, was particularly interested in learning how corals communicate.

The researchers looked for genes in corals that are associated with the emission or reception of sound through a process called polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification. This process amplifies a segment of DNA to the point that scientists can easily study it in more detail.

During this process, the researchers noticed the presence of genes in corals that are associated with hearing and producing sound in anemones and freshwater polyps, so they concluded that corals could be enough to communicate through sound.

This helps us understand how to better protect corals by reducing noise.

Coral is an important food source for marine life, a precious jewel symbolizing good luck, a valuable medicinal herb handed down for thousands of years, and a guardian of the coastline. But this ocean treasure, which has existed for about 535 million years, is in danger of disappearing.

To know the global coral reef area is less than two-thousandths of the total area of the ocean but supports a quarter of marine life is the basis for the survival of many marine plants and animals.

Fish that feed on algae, such as parrotfish, rough-skinned snapper, and sparrow bream, go near corals to eat symbiotic algae or use their similar body color to hide from natural predators. At the same time, these small fish attract other organisms such as larger fish, making the coral and its surrounding area a rich ecosystem.

Thus, coral reefs are important for maintaining commercially valuable fishery resources. In Malaysia, thirty percent of the source of the catch is caught from the coral reefs.

In the past, coral was also considered a precious mineral for its dazzling colorfulness and was often used in court jewelry in the form of coral beads.

And in medicine, compounds from coral can potentially be used to treat cancer, AIDS, analgesia, and other therapeutic uses.

Healthy coral reefs can even absorb 97% of wave energy, thus buffering currents, waves, and storms from the coastline and helping to prevent loss of life and property.

Sadly, as early as the 1980s, climate warming has seriously affected the ecological health of coral communities around the world, but people are not alerted to this, even some scientists do not think so. They thought that after a while, the corals would recover naturally.

But as the saying goes, the more beautiful something is, the more delicate it is.

Coral can only live in the water temperature throughout the year to maintain in 22-28 degrees Celsius waters, and the water must be clean, high transparency, sunlight, and low tide can not be exposed to the water above for a long time.

Therefore, it can be imagined that the natural recovery of coral will only be human wishful thinking. The coral death that occurred next has not only created an uproar in the scientific community but has also attracted the attention of the world.

Since 1998, 16% of the world's tropical coral reefs have died due to rising water temperatures; in 2016, 70% of the world's coral reefs were destroyed; and in 2019, the Great Barrier Reef, known as the "crown jewel" of Australia, lost 50% of its corals.

By 2020, humans will have lost more than half of the world's coral reefs, much faster than originally expected, and the trend of coral death is not slowing down.

September 18, 2019, the British journal "Nature" published a related article: if the climate continues to warm, it is expected that the world's coral reefs will all disappear in 2070. So it seems that this serious ecological disaster has reached the point where humans have to make changes.

Many governments now ban the removal of coral from reefs and inform coastal residents about reef protection and ecology. A new profession has even been created: growing coral.

Every coral breeding season, researchers will spend days on end on the sea floor to collect fertilized coral eggs. The fertilized eggs are then developed into coral larvae through artificial larvae multiplication techniques, and then they are released back onto artificial reefs in designated waters. When the adult corals are successfully grown, they can be transplanted to other seabeds.

In the South China Sea, for example, researchers have successfully planted more than 200,000 square meters of coral.

While local actions such as habitat restoration and herbivore conservation can reduce local damage, the long-term threat of acidification, temperature change, and sea level rise remains a challenge. To avoid continued ocean acidification and rising temperatures, perhaps the best approach is to achieve carbon neutrality.