Orbicella annularis
A threatened Caribbean coral recorded by NOAA
“For most of history, no one could tell us apart. My two closest relatives and I were considered a single species, one coral with many faces, building the Caribbean together. It was only when someone looked closely enough that we became three. I grow in lobes and columns, slow and steady, a colony that can live for hundreds of years. What you see on the reef today has been growing since before most human memory. Then disease came. Then the water warmed. Large colonies became smaller ones, living tissue dying and pulling back, what took centuries quietly coming undone. I was one before I was three. Now even that feels like a long time ago. Listen to how quiet it has become where I used to be.”