An amazing variety of forms and shapes washed ashore during high tides.

Once alive and full of colors, when dead corals slowly turn to white.

The abundance of coral types and the shapes of coral reefs they form is quite surprising.

The structure, the form, its strength are all an astonishing architecture work.

One of the most critical distinctions between plants and animals is that plants make their own food, while animals depend on outside sources for their nutritional requirements. Coral animals take advantage of both forms of nutrition by hosting plant-like algae in their tissues in a symbiotic relationship.

Coral grows mostly in shallow waters. When it naturally dies is crushed by the sea to form sand. Also pollution, anchoring, bomb fishing and climate change contribute to its destruction.

All the pieces of coral shown here have been collected in the Tuban beach near the airport of Bali, Indonesia.

Here people sometimes use big chunk of coral to build walls. Its a free locally available stone-like hard material mainly composed of calcium carbonate.