World`s Rarest Coral Discovered In Pacific Ocean

Anyone got a frag to sell?
-Eric
World's Rarest Coral Discovered In Pacific Ocean
http://www.care2.com/causes/environment/blog/worlds-rarest-coral-discovered/

For the first time in over 100 years, a colony of Pacific elkhorn coral (Acropora rotumana) has been spotted in the remote North Pacific Ocean.
Researchers
from Australia's Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (CoECRS)
found the coral during an underwater survey of the Arno atoll in the
Marshall Islands.
The Pacific elkhorn coral got its name from the
long, horn-like branches it develops over thousands of years. The
colony found by the CoECRE researchers was especially large, measuring
16 feet (5 meters) across and nearly 7 feet (2 m) high.
According to LiveScience, the coral colony looks like the critically endangered elkhorn coral (Acropora palmata) of the Atlantic Ocean, but genetic analysis has shown that the Atlantic and Pacific varieties are different species.
Part
of the dominant genus of reef-building corals, researchers are very
interested in learning how the Pacific version lives, and hope that it
will provide clues about these exotic marine creatures that will help
determine their conservation status.
Coral Conundrum
Discovering
a patch of rare coral of this magnitude is a welcome bit of good news
for oceanographers that have been slowly watching the world's coral
reefs disappear.
For years, marine scientists have noticed that
abnormally warm weather, coupled with pollution and overfishing, have
contributed to a rapid decline in large coral around the world.
Smaller
coral varieties are trying to pick up the slack, but they don't have
the ability to build the same vast reef structures that provide homes to
many species of tropical fish. Scientists fear that if large coral
species dissapear, the fish might soon follow.
Safe For Now?
Although
the newfound colony of elkhorn coral is thrilling for scientists, it's
difficult to say how long it will be able to survive.
Coral bleaching,
another symptom of climate change and pollution, occurs when the
symbiosis between the coral and the algae breaks down and corals
effectively expel the algae and turn white.
Thirty years ago these bleaching events were very rare, but scientists have found them more frequently in recent years.