Fluorescence is one of the things we love most about keeping and growing corals in an aquarium so we relish the opportunity to see new corals under the blue light treatment. We don’t have to tell you that although we enjoy some softies and anemones, Caribbean and Atlantic stony corals are not part of the reef aquarium scene in any meaningful manner so we were delighted to see a special new video showcasing the fluorescence of Caribbean reefs with lots of footage of stony corals.
Corals like Montastrea cavernosa, Orbicella, and the endemic species of Acropora will be familiar to many divers but all but unknown to the everyday reef aquarist. This video by Reef Patrol and SECORE uses underwater fluorescence imaging technology including blue dive lights and yellow-orange camera filters to showcase what these corals would look like if we ever got a crack at growing them in our aquariums like some public institutions have very recently started doing.
It’s not just the corals that glow with surrealistic colors as the anemones are no slouch, many reef fish are sporting their own neon garb and the invertebrates like crabs and bristle worms are pretty dang spectacular too. This video incorporates a wide variety of framing with lots of super close macro video, some time lapses and it’s just a well deserved spotlight showing that native American corals can be every bit as impressive in the color department as their Indo-Pacific counterparts.
