An eternal autumn

Like trees with colorful leaves of change in autumn, soft corals can create colorful underwater vistas in tropical seas. But despite their beauty, soft corals may sometimes indicate a turbulent past in a reef ecosystem. Soft corals are successful colonizers and are often among the first species to appear on damaged reefs. Several areas in the Indo-Pacific have seen an increase in soft corals since a major coral bleaching event destroyed many of the hard corals that dominated shallow coral reefs. Similarly, they often dominate reefs that have been subjected to dynamite fishing in the past.