Articles

When climate forecasters predict busy Atlantic hurricane seasons, residents on the east and Gulf coasts begin to prepare to face deadly weather. One potentially important factor in hurricane forecasts is the cycle of El Niño (the boy in Spanish), and its counterpart, La Niña (the girl).

These two innocently named phenomena have a mighty impact on global weather.

Long wavelengths of light such as red and yellow and very short wavelengths such as ultraviolet light (UV) get absorbed very quickly in water. As a result, the only light remaining in the deep ocean is blue.

Organisms are therefore adapted to see only this dim blue light, and most are colored red because the lack of red light makes them virtually invisible.

A cherry red sports car passes by and catches everyone’s eye. A brilliant red hibiscus is a centerpiece in a lush tropical garden. It seems impossible for anything having a crimson hue to be inconspicuous. But that’s precisely what some marine animals are.

Red snapper, several kinds of rockfishes, and even some shrimps that live in moderately deep water are covered with red pigment. Yet in their natural habitat, they are virtually invisible.

Corals are the fundamental building blocks for spectacular reefs that decorate tropical seas throughout the world.A single coral head is actually a colony of individual organisms, called polyps, and each polyp has its own stony skeleton which is joined to its neighbor’s skeleton. Together, the colony forms a massive outcropping on the sea floor that functions as a single animal.

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