Team Microbe

Like humans, corals are home to millions of microbes such as bacteria and algae. Here, “Team Microbe” members Matthew Neave (WHOI and King Abdullah University of Science and Technology), Amy Apprill (WHOI), Chad Smith (WHOI) and Alyson Santoro (University of Maryland) dive on a reef off Micronesia to study how bacteria interact with corals. Scientists have found that the sediments beneath coral reefs contain 10,000 times more bacteria than the surrounding seawater. And in a 2013 study, Apprill and colleagues identified throngs of bacteria living within coral tissues.(Photo by Luis Lamar, Advanced Imaging and Visualization Laboratory Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)