Devonshire Cup Coral

Photo: Asbjørn Hansen · CC BY-NC-ND

Devonshire cup corals stud every centimetre of the Gjógv cave walls below 5 metres, their solitary polyps translucent in torchlight with a pattern of concentric colours — cream, amber, and pale rose — radiating from the central disc. This cold-water coral does not contain zooxanthellae and thrives in the absence of sunlight, making the cave interior ideal habitat. Despite their modest size of just a few centimetres across, individual animals can live for several decades and play an important structural role as settlement substrate for other sessile invertebrates.