The Coral Crisis: Why Identifying Reef Builders is Crucial for Our Future

By Gianfranco Rossi, Reef Check Italia Onlus

The Red Sea, Maldives, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Australia are among the top destinations that attract millions of tourists every year, especially divers eager to explore these tropical paradises. The variety of life, vibrant colors, and extraordinary stories behind the countless organisms inhabiting these environments create an irresistible allure for many. Although coral reefs are named after corals, few people truly understand these precious organisms that have been building vital structures for millions of years, giving rise to the most biodiverse marine habitats on the planet. Currently, corals are in danger, and there is a real risk that by the end of this century, coral reefs, as we have been fortunate enough to know them, may no longer exist. Future generations will pay the price for the failings of previous ones who did not preserve one of the planet’s greatest wonders. This will inevitably happen if we do nothing to prevent it. Each of us can contribute, but to do so, we must first recognize the importance of the reef builders: the corals.

Although corals are crucial for reef ecosystems and human benefits, our efforts to support and monitor their role and status are hindered by our limited ability to identify them. Accurately and consistently recognizing corals at the genus level is essential for assessing community richness and, when done systematically, can serve as an indicator of reef health over time.

Trying to identify coral species is a complex and challenging task due to the intrinsic characteristics of these organisms. For over a century, taxonomists have attempted to assign names to the various types of corals that early biologists collected during their walks along the beaches, a field that saw significant development after the invention of scuba gear. All the information gathered during this long period remains valid today for attempting to name specific species, and this methodology is utilized in the volume “Corals”. This guide aims to assist in the identification of the main genera of reef-building corals using images from across the Indo-Pacific region. 

Most of the information is based exclusively on the macro-morphology of corals, although today scientific identification often requires information from microstructural analyses, anatomy of the soft parts of the coral, and molecular genetics. After a general introduction, the methodology used and the characteristics of individual genera will be described, and a series of useful information will be provided for identification. Given the complexity of coral identification, we will rarely identify individual species and instead, identification will be primarily to genus level. However, if required, further taxonomic resources can be found in the bibliography.