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    BBC Wildlife Magazine

    Q&A

    Sep 22, 2022 4 minutes

    Email your questions to [email protected]

    Does the UK have any coral reefs?

    HELEN SCALES ANSWERS:

    Corals are certainly not confined to the shallow, sunny waters of the tropics. More than half of around 5,000 known species of corals live in cold and deep waters. The main reef-forming coral in UK waters is a bushy, white species, Lophelia pertusa, or Desmophyllum pertusa as some scientists prefer to call it.

    Mostly located off the west coast of Scotland, reefs are found from around 150m deep and are very slow growing. A huge reef off the coasts of Barra and Mingulay in the Outer Hebrides covers more than 100km. In the Rockall Trough, 160km north-west of Scotland’s Cape Wrath, the Darwin, as well as another species .

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