Coral   2 comments

This beach in the north-west of Scotland’s Isle of Skye is famous for being entirely composed from coral … except that it isn’t. The ‘coral’ is mainly shell fragments and bleached remnants of red algae.

 

Posted November 30, 2008 by MRY in Geology, Skye

2 responses to Coral

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  1. Mark, can you do something to make it clear who is writing what in this blog…I just want to know quite how authoritative it is!

    jg

  2. If you go rock-pooling and see a pink skin covering the stones you have seen a very close relative of this `coral`. Usually algae has to hold onto something hard but on rare occasions it can form indipendantly. This loose `coral` , coralline algae is known as MAERL. The white material you find(calcium carbonate ) is the main skeleton of the algae which has lost it`s live pink algae covering. For those that don`t manage to cross to Skye we found it at Arisaig.

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