🪸
🐠
☀️
✦ OCEANS UNIVERSE · AGES 6–11 ✦

OCEANS
UNIVERSE!

🪸 Polyps · 🐠 Biodiversity · ☀️ Symbiosis!

📖 200 Topics🆓 FREE⏱️ 5 min read🧠 Quiz included
🧱
POLYP
CaCO₃ builders
→
🌿
ZOOX
Algae inside
→
🐠
DIVERSITY
25% species
→
⚠️
BLEACH
Heat stress
→
🏝️
ATOLL
Ring reefs
🐠 CORAL REEFS
TOPIC 02 · OCEANS · POLYPS · ZOOXANTHELLAE · CONSERVATION
PAGE 1 OF 5, CITIES BUILT BY TINY ANIMALS
POLYPS
A colorful coral reef colony with branching coral polyps built up over centuries
LIMESTONE SKYSCRAPERS UNDERWAVES
Each coral polyp is a soft-bodied cousin of jellyfish and sea anemones, it builds a cup of calcium carbonate around itself. Colonies stack branch on branch for centuries, cemented by algae and sponges, until whole islands rise from fringing rims. Warm, clear, sunlit water lets chemistry run fast enough to outpace erosion from storms and hungry grazers.
⚡ DID YOU KNOW?
The Great Barrier Reef is visible from space, yet each builder is only millimetres wide.
REEF!
SUN
Warm shallow sunlit water above a tropical coral reef where growth is fastest
☀️ Shallow < ~60 m typical
🌡️ Warm seas speed growth
SHELL
Close-up of a coral polyp secreting its calcium carbonate cup skeleton below
🧱 CaCO₃ skeleton secreted
🪸 Branching shapes trap fish
✦ FREE ACCOUNT ✦
LOG IN
TO READ
Free account unlocks Topics 1, 2 & 3 of all subjects.
No credit card — takes 10 seconds.
Continue with Google