Third Place: Beautiful Invader

Photography by Haley Davis, graduate student, Charles E. Schmidt College of Science
FAU Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute

Tubastraea coccinea is an invasive species of stony coral with origins in the Indo-Pacific region. This coral is adapted to low-light ecosystems under rocks and on deep reefs. It is able to do this due to the fact that it doesn't rely on sugars produced from photosynthesis, like many of its relatives. Rather, this coral gets all of its energy through heterotrophy or active feeding, giving it an upper hand in these challenging habitats. All of these features make this coral excellent at invading its non-native ecosystems in the Caribbean and tropical Atlantic, where it is ecosystems utilizing man-made artificial structures, such as shipwrecks and oil rigs, as a sort of highway to travel up the coastline. This photo was taken underneath an artificial reef structure at the Blue Heron Bridge in Riviera Beach, Fla., on a dive, in an effort to catalog the abundance and size of T. coccinea colonies at this popular recreational dive site.