On the Edge of Existence: Rediscovering a Lost Coral

Wednesday 1st Jun 2022, 9.15am

“I had been waiting so long to have access to these reefs again, to see whether this species had continued to hold on by the very tips of its polyps.”

In March 2020 the world changed in a way that none of us could have predicted. As many countries began to close their borders, a team of marine biologists, including Dr Bryan Wilson, found themselves having to abandon their research expedition to the Chagos Archipelago in the central Indian Ocean. But on one of the very last dives, Bryan spotted something astonishing – the once thought to be extinct Chagos Brain Coral. In summer 2021 Bryan and his team returned to the reef, in an attempt to rediscover this rare and endangered coral.