There's a phrase that came up when i was reading about this from what you three had written, that at this was a teeming with life in a sterile sea. Can you just tell mewat you mean by that corals exist in this sort of oceanic barren landscape, this oceanic desert? And darwin talked about this, you know, seeing these ocean deserts, and then coming across one of the most diverse,. if not the most diverse, eaker system hehad ever seen. So i think our understanding of reefs has been completely changed in some ways, thanks to darwin. Karlxotmi comments made us realize that tiny, unimportant, creatures like
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the simple animals which informed Charles Darwin's first book, The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs, published in 1842. From corals, Darwin concluded that the Earth changed very slowly and was not fashioned by God. Now coral reefs, which some liken to undersea rainforests, are threatened by human activity, including fishing, pollution and climate change.
With
Steve Jones
Senior Research Fellow in Genetics at University College London
Nicola Foster
Lecturer in Marine Biology at the University of Plymouth
And
Gareth Williams
Associate Professor in Marine Biology at Bangor University School of Ocean Sciences
Producer Simon Tilllotson.