The Northern Most reef in Japan is now even more North!

The newly discovered Tsushima Island Reef is 43 miles north of the last reef that was found back in 2001 (the Iki Island Reef) off the coast of Japan. Dominated mostly by the genus Favia “The water in this bay is basically turbid” says Hiroya Yamano, a researcher at Japan’s National Institute for Environmental Studies.  Coral reefs are believed to form in warmer waters but the temperature of these waters remains quite low at around 55 degrees celsius in the winter. Yamano and his team are unsure how a reef could grow in such a cold environment but researching the Iki and Tsushima Island Reefs will lend insight into things like climate change, as the settling of warmer water species like Acropora have been documented over the past 20 years at both sites. His findings were published online in the journal Geology on July 12th. Read more here!