KEY ASPECTS OF THE STORY
creatures. There will be enough for everyone. At night, the coral is fluorescent. Some are visible only at night with their fluorescent yellow, pink, or blue coloring. The shapes disappear and we see only silhouettes. In the labyrinth or French garden of leptoria (‘brain corals’), millions of years of evolution have created a magnificent underwater mountain chain, in which fish larvae and translucent shrimp become lost. Favia coral polyps resemble little volcanoes. Like the goby fish, we meander across a stinging plain dotted with little hills, each sensitive to the slightest touch. Acropora corals, when looked at with the naked eye or under a magnifying glass, are reminiscent of an Alpine forest of a thousand pines. 2- FILTERERS A fish defecates at the top of the reef, its “brown cloud” gradually sinks toward the bottom, sifted by the countless “hands”, corollae, rakes, and filters of all the filterers ranged along the reef and by the many mobile creatures. Here, food literally falls from above. The water is filtered and re- filtered a thousand times over by so many different creatures (sponges, corals, gorgonians, sea lilies, etc.). The cascade of plankton is never-ending. One night, a crinoid with golden branches awakens and spreads out its gracile fan towards the welcome rain. Buried in the sand during the day, the feather of the sea pen deploys once night falls. A new filterer faces the current. All around, the sea is sorted and sifted. The chalice sponges breathe. Like lungs in the
water continuously inhaling and exhaling, the sponges of the reef are in fact not breathing but rather filtering the sea, on a vast scale. Follow the journey taken by the filtered particles. Visualize the course of the sea water, as it is aspirated and ejected. There are ascidians of a striking blue. A superb seawater filtering machine. 3- PARROTFISH Every night, the parrotfish envelops itself in a set of mucus pajamas so that it can sleep in peace, without its odorous presence betraying it to nocturnal predators such as the moray eel, which leaves its burrow nightly to smell out its prey. (cf. its well-developed nostrils). The sounds of the reef are many, a parrotfish nibbling the coral, a giant clam closing with a sound like a cathedral door shutting, fish growl and rustle. Shrimp click their joints, and angel fish graze on sponges. 4- TWILIGHT When the sun sets, there is a kind of truce, a half-hour when all falls totally still in the reef, when the diurnal fish disappear and the nocturnal inhabitants emerge in a precise and well-established routine. The smaller diurnal fish are the first to retire, followed by the medium-sized and finally the largest among them, and vice versa for their nocturnal counterparts. During the twilight period when day turns to night, the plankton migrate, signaling the moment for all of the many filterers in the sea (hard and soft corals, gorgonians, sea lilies, etc.) to suddenly blossom.
24 /
Powered by FlippingBook