Underwater immunity

Corals have immune systems? We learned that fun fact and much more in this blog post by ecology and evolutionary biology professor Drew Harvell, who is currently in reefs off the southwest coast of Puerto Rico for three weeks to investigate environmental factors that may be increasing disease outbreaks in the sea fan coral, Gorgonia ventalina. So far she’s had a painful encounter with a fire coral while surveying sea fans and collecting samples at 6 of 10 sites… and taking some pretty pictures, as evidenced above!