A closer look
While most of the world’s reefs are bleaching into desolate graveyards due to warming oceans, the corals of the Gulf of Aqaba in the Red Sea are casually surviving record-breaking heatwaves. Their secret lies in the holobiont—the collective ecosystem of the coral animal and its microscopic algae tenants. Instead of dying when temperatures spike, these super corals dynamically shuffle their zooxanthellae, evicting weaker algae and adopting highly heat-resistant strains from the surrounding water. It’s a ruthless biological real-estate market that makes them nearly immune to global warming.
