Wire Coral

Wire corals grow in long, spiralling single-strand colonies up to 3 metres in length from the Cathedral walls at depths below 12 metres, each strand hosting a linear community of tiny gobies, shrimps, and basket stars that are invisible without close inspection. As an antipatharian black coral, wire corals are exceptionally slow-growing and long-lived — individual colonies here may be several hundred years old. Their undisturbed condition at Saint Helena contrasts sharply with the broken and smashed wire coral fragments commonly seen at heavily trafficked dive sites elsewhere.