“Each coral reef is a self-governing ecosystem of thousands of diverse species, each of which is the absolute best in at least one attribute, otherwise it would not have survived. There are predators and prey, competition and cooperation,. There is no boss, no President. Yet over millions of years it has ebbed and flowed with tides, cyclones, feast and famine, adapting to many ice ages with hundred-metre drops in sea-level as well as epochs ten degrees hotter than today.”

— Malcolm Ross, underwater photographer