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When the moon, sun and ocean temperatures all align, an underwater "snowstorm" occurs. Corals put on a massive spawning spectacle by sending tiny white spheres floating up the water column all at once.

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DEEP LOOK is an ultraHD (4K) short video series created by KQED in San Francisco and presented by PBS Digital Studios. See the unseen at the very edge of our visible world. Explore big scientific mysteries by going incredibly small.
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About 10 days after a full moon, an upsidedown underwater blizzard occurs. Tiny spheres float up the water column. But they're not sand particles or algae, they're packets of egg and sperm from coral. This snowlike spectacle is known as coral spawning.

Corals are not plants or rocks, but colonies of hundreds of thousands of tiny animals called polyps. These polyps look like underwater flowers, with a soft body, a mouth and tentacles.

Polyps obtain nutrients from singlecelled algae called zooxanthellae, which live in their tissue. The coral provides protection and compounds for photosynthesis. In return, zooxanthellae supply elements to build calcium carbonate skeletons that give them their stony structure.

Corals can’t move to find a partner and mix up their gene pool, so they’ve adapted a unique reproductive strategy that allows their eggs and sperm to fertilize with other colonies. The polyps release their gamete bundles together, at a time determined by environmental factors determined by the lunar cycle, setting sun, and temperature. Scientists believe this ensures high levels of fertilization across the ocean.

What are corals known for?

Coral reefs provide habitat for a quarter of marine life, including fish, crustaceans, mollusks and sea turtles. Corals can be found throughout the world’s oceans, in both shallow and deep water.

— How long can a coral live?

Studies have shown that some corals can live up to 5,000 years, making them the longest living animals on Earth.

Do all corals live in warm water?

No. In fact, over half of all known coral species are found in cold, deep and dark waters. These corals feed by waiting for small food particles to swim by, and they lack the symbiotic algae that live in the tissue of warm water corals.

– Do corals have other forms of reproduction?

There are many species of coral, but only two main types of reproduction. Corals reproduce either asexually, by budding, fragmentation and fission, or sexually, through broadcast spawning and brooding.

+ Find additional resources and a transcript on KQED Science:

https://www.kqed.org/science/1991266/...

+ For more information:

Coral Regeneration Lab at the California Academy of Sciences: https://www.calacademy.org/aboutus/m...

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