Kwajalein has more than its fair share of Red Acropora

Red Acros are one of the rarest color forms you can find in captively grown Acropora species, which is why species such as the ORA Red Planet, the Red Dragon acro, and the raspberry red Millepora acros are so popular in a field of otherwise blue and green SPS corals. With red color being such a rarity among Acropora, you can imagine our surprise when we came across a handful of different red strains of Acropora at Kwajalein Atoll which represented at least five different species.

We’ve already told you about the Red Devil Acropora tenella, the red forms of Acropora rongelapensis and the Ebeye Special Acropora microclados, but there were a few more. The video above shows a colony of Red Devil Acro which has an ‘unnatural’ red glow at the 50 foot depth where the red acropora are mostly often sighted.

An unidentified acropora with stunning red color and yellow-green polyps was just resting on the reef

The two other Red Acros sighted at Kwajalein included an unidentified colony which had the same red color scheme as many of the Red Devil Tenella and Red Ronggies; red branches with blue tips or growth margins and bright green polyps. This particular coral, being unidentified but otherwise not standing out as a unique species could very well be the result of hybridization, or some other poorly known phenomenon such as the coral chimera we also documented.

we picked up this red acropora for close inspection and put it right back on the reef

one frag of the first ever crop of Red Devil acros propagated by yours truly

The fifth strain of Kwajalein red acros is a beautiful red Acropora speciosa which is very rare, but really hard to miss when it is found. With total of 24 hours spent underwater, diving and looking for cool corals, we only came across two colonies of the red Acropora speciosa and these had a beautiful, rich red body and branches and elegant little yellow tips to the corallites.

Genetics is a complicated field of science and it is even more complicated when coral genetics are considered, but we do know that corals are capable of doing a lot of ‘gene mixing’ and reticulate evolution is a theory that applies particularly to corals. That said, we hazard to guess that perhaps in the central pacific ocean, including the Marshall Islands, there could be a lot of gene mixing going on to help propagate the ‘red color gene’ among a wide group of stony corals in a way which is not present in other coral regions of the world, at least not as far as red color is concerned.

One of only two exquisite red Acropora speciosa sighted at Kwajalein Atoll

Only the second colony of red acropora speciosa discovered at Kwajalein Atoll

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Jake Adams

Jake Adams has been an avid marine aquarist since the mid 90s and has worked in the retail side of the marine aquarium trade for more than ten years. He has a bachelor’s degree in Marine Science and has been the managing editor of ReefBuilders.com since 2008. Jake is interested in every facet of the marine aquarium hobby from the concepts to the technology, rare fish to exotic corals, and his interests are well documented through a very prolific career of speaking to reef clubs and marine aquarium events, and writing articles for aquarium publications across the globe. His primary interest is in corals which Jake pursues in the aquarium hobby as well as diving the coral reefs of the world.