Sea whips, a kind of flexible but horny gorgonian 

 coral, are a dominant feature of the coral reefs of 

 the western Atlantic. These were growing off the 

 Virgin Islands at a depth of twenty-eight feet. (T. 

 Parkinson; National Audubon) 



the colonies may resemble feathers or great plumes. 

 Having established a sure anchorage in the moving 

 water, gorgonians are a standing invitation to settling 

 larvae of invertebrates such as sponges, hydroids, 

 bryozoans, and brachiopods, to hop on and take 

 hold, later obscuring the host polyps or even, in the 

 case of certain little crustaceans and worms, stimulat- 

 ing the host to pathological growth as it adjusts to the 

 guests. Gorgonians are very sensitive to strong light, 

 and they expand their polyps fully only at night or 

 on dull days. 



In shallow European waters, in many of the same 

 places that support the fleshy hands of Alcyonium, 

 we find the graceful little sea fan, Eunicella verru- 

 cosa (Plates 11 and 12), in which the treelike 

 branches are flattened and grow all in one plane. It 

 has a horny black branching skeletal core covered 

 with orange, pink, or white fleshy tissue and innu- 

 merable little white polyps. The dried colony retains 

 its lovely form, but the orange-pink color of the gay- 

 est specimens dries to a dull white, because the pig- 

 mentation is not in the spicules, as in most alcyonar- 

 ians, but in carotenoid droplets in the living cells. 

 Less disappointing when dried is the larger sea fan, 

 Gorgonia, of semitropical waters, in which the flat- 

 tened branches have cross-connections that convert 

 the colony into a lattice of yellow, lavender, or pur- 

 ple "lace," with lasting color in the scattered spicules. 



The red or precious coral, Corallium, has a diff'er- 

 ent kind of skeleton, completely lacking the horny 

 gorgonin. Highly prized since ancient times, the hard 

 and entirely calcareous red or pink branching core 

 lies hidden within the colonial tissue, which is fleshy 



and yielding though stiffened and colored by red, cal- 

 careous, evenly scattered spicules. The surface of the 

 living colony is raised into little protuberances from 

 which arise the pure white blossom-like polyps. 

 Smaller elevations house a diminutive kind of polyp 

 without tentacles.. 



Commercial fishing of coral was for centuries car- 

 ried on off the coasts of Corsica, Sardinia, and Sicily, 

 the south coast of France, the north coast of Africa 

 from the Straits of Gibraltar to Tunis, and in the At- 

 lantic from the Cape Verde Islands. A similar red 

 coral, though inferior in beauty and texture, is also 

 collected and worked in Japan. The coral colonies 

 are strongly affixed to the rocky bottoms and slopes, 

 and in the Mediterranean were collected by boats 

 towing large wooden crosses dangling old nets and 

 frayed rope mops that entangled and broke off the 

 lovely red branches. The difficulties of coral fishing, 

 especially with hand labor in past times, so enhanced 

 the value of the coral that it was traded to the In- 

 dians and Chinese for emeralds, rubies, and pearls. 

 The early Celts in Britain, before the Roman con- 

 quest, obtained coral by barter from the Gauls, and 

 used it to decorate shields and other valuables. Its 

 rarity and blood-red color inevitably suggested ther- 

 apeutic powers, and to the end of the eighteenth 

 century physicians made great use of powdered red 

 coral in prescriptions. In our own century rural Eu- 

 ropeans have continued to attribute special thera- 

 peutic value to coral necklaces and have given them 

 to adults suffering from debilitating diseases or to 

 children cutting teeth, for which they must serve as 

 well as any other smooth, hard surface. Now the 

 coral "trees" that once thickly covered whole areas 

 of the Mediterranean are mostly smashed or gone. 

 Only in specially protected areas or in recesses and 

 grottoes do they survive in great numbers. In The 

 Silent World. J.-Y. Cousteau presents colored photo- 

 graphs of red branches of Corallium hanging from 

 the ceiling of a cave and "accumulating like stalac- 

 tites." From such places it can be gathered only by 

 divers, to whom the red coral branches, seen at 

 depths below 120 feet, appear blue-black. 



THE SEA PENS AND SEA PANSIES 



The sea pens, or pennatulaceans, were named in 

 the days when a pen still suggested the feathered 

 quill of a bird. The fleshy, feather-shaped bodies add 

 color to the same warm bottoms favored by their 

 alcyonarian relatives, and also extend with them into 

 temperate or cold waters. Sea pens, however, are re- 

 stricted to soft bottoms, in which they anchor by 

 means of the expansible bulbous tip of an elongate 

 stalk. In size they range from a few inches to 3 feet 

 or more. Their varied shades of yellow, orange, red, 

 brown, and purple result mostly from the pigmenta- 

 tion of spicules scattered in the flesh, though many 



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