Cold-water coral reefs

Abstract

In the recent years, knowledge on the general distribution, biology, geology, and hydrography has generated a wealth of information on the subject of cold-water coral reefs and their associated communities through the application of state-of-the-art marine instrumentation (Roberts et al., 2009a). Cold-water coral reefs are formed by a small group of colonial azooxanthellate scleractinians as biological engineers and thereby providing a great variety of habitats attractive for a diverse associated community. These framework-constructing corals trap suspended sedimentary particles to generate a three-dimensional structure within an astonishingly short time and at rates comparable to some tropical shallow-water coral reef systems.