Corals of Tropical Oceans

During the author’s tennure as Director of Fisheries of Andaman and Nicobar Islands between 1981-84, he. was fascinated by the fraceful and soft colour of the submarine garden along the coastal waters of south Andaman,full of live corals of red, orange, purple colouration at Wandoor and Chiriatapu. As a head of the Department of Fisheries, he had a duty to check illegal querrying and smuggling of the coral fauna from Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Smuggled dead and bleached corals were confiscated by the departmental staff, while embarking in ships and planers. The destruction of live corals pained him. This give him the initial impetus to know and write on corals. The present book,”Corals of Tropical Oceans” is an outcome of his well nurtured thoughts. In the book, attempt has been mede to start with the zoogeography of coral fauna by outlining their distribution in the world oceans, reef evolution and regional difference. Status of tropical coral reef followed by classification, both of conventional taxonomy, their colours and shapes and the characterists of past corals and recent reef have been mentioned. While outlining the concept of reef biology, the growth and calcification of hermatypic corals, their sexual maturity and reproduction, together with spawing, recruitment and productivity have been take into account. In the reef ecology, reef communities, their interaction, zonation pattern and regional differences, the diversity of the species, competition,predation among communities to attain an equilibrium state have been discussed in details. The composition of Scleractinian, the reef building corals in Atlantic and Indo-Pacific reefs were compared in respect of their ecology and community structures. Describing the coral bloom of coral sea, black coral of South Island, reef wilderness of Phoenix Islands, dazzling corals of Palau, gorgonian corals of Tamil Nadu, and corals around Andaman and Nicobar Islands in Indian Ocean, an idea of coral distribution and reef zonation has been put forth in the light of species diversity.