via fastcompany:
Watch This Incredible Slo-Mo Video Of The Underwater Creatures You Never See
Coral is actually a living creature, but the human eye rarely catches it moving. This incredibly slow-motion video lets you see the ocean life you don’t notice, before it’s destroyed by climate change.
This is an amazing deep dive into the psychedelic world of fluorescent coral from marine biologist and photographer Daniel Stoupin.
Coral are not dead skeletons or rocky statues. They are living structures that move, swell, and slurp daily, just not on time scales that we can recognize with our eyes. Thankfully, Stoupin and his timelapse morphs our perception of time so we can.
Check out the stunning video below:
This work of ocean art leaves one question unanswered. Why would a coral be fluorescent in the first place? They have no ability to “see”, at least as far as we know. What evolutionary gift could glowing give?
Luckily, this isn’t the first time that Daniel Stoupin has landed on IOTBS, and we might be able to shed some (wavelength filtered) light on that question. Check out this previous gallery of his fluorescent photography to discover the fishy reason why these coral might glow.