Finger Soft Coral

Singapore's Splendour

The unravelling of shore life at low spring tide. Soft corals galore. In water, feeding polyps are active trapping plankton but are securely retracted when there is no water. Slumped over, their soft masses collapse to strange forms.

Often labeled as underwater wildflowers, some do appear like fluffy cotton candy. Unlike hard corals, their supporting structures are reinforced by a matrix of calcerous particles (sclerites). Soft corals are either green, yellow and brown; depending on the zooanthellae found on the tissue mass. As they outgrow the hard corals, they release terpenes to destroy them. Some can appear like sea anemones but unlike them, their polyp tentacles are tiny and branched and they do not have a central mouth.

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