Dead Man's Fingers

Photo: Rachel Crane · CC BY

Dead man's fingers soft coral dominates the Enniberg Wall below 10 metres, forming dense colonies of cream, orange, and pale yellow lobes that sway rhythmically in the tidal current and give the wall the appearance of a living, breathing organism. Each colony is a superorganism of hundreds of individual polyps that extend their eight-tentacled feeding apparatus into current-rich water to capture zooplankton. The colonies grow slowly and can live for decades, meaning the largest specimens on Enniberg Wall may have established during World War II.