Researchers exploring the Pacific Ocean off the coast of the Solomon Islands have found an extraordinary organism: A massive coral made of 1 billion polyps, tiny individual creatures.
Measuring 100 feet wide and long, the single coral is estimated to be at least 300 years old. It is not a reef, which is a network of many coral colonies. Instead, the newly discovered coral is a single structure that has grown uninterrupted for hundreds of years.
According to National Geographic, the coral is so massive it can be seen from space, but even from the surface it may appear just as a rock. Researchers thought it might be a shipwreck. Even local people did not know the coral was there.
