Coral Ghost Town:
What Could Have Happened Here?

The area looked similar to others we had surveyed - scattered boulders, moderate currents - but the scenery was mystifying. The crooks and crevices between the boulders were filled with coral rubble of the stony coral Lophelia and the giant cup coral Desmophyllum and holdfasts and ghostly branches of dead gorgonian soft corals glowed white from the boulder tops.

What could cause this? Could sedimentation patterns have changed? Could it be that human activity caused this? Disease? Why so localized? Was there a change in nutrient loading? Even though we cannot hear the sounds of the sea when we use a remotely operated vehicle (ROV), with the absence of life came a silence - perhaps intuited from the black and white of the scene that at other sites was filled with reds and oranges, or the lack of fish and invertebrates in the assemblages, or the silence of our team as we tried to grasp the meaning of the scene before us.

A glimmer of hope? Stark white lace corals - a Stylaster hydrocoral species came into view on some of the boulders. Could this be an early succession species similar to alder and fireweed that are first to establish after a forest fire or a clear cut? A species that can tolerate low nutrients? So brilliant and beautiful and though white, unlike the skeletal remains of the other corals, the Stylaster was alive.

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