Molly Timmers, the expedition’s lead scientist, says they found it the night before the team was ... Thousands of coral polyps come together to form a colony and these colonies make up a reef.

Coral polyps, the reef's building blocks ... Follwing a full-moon night or two each year, immobile stony corals like acropora millepora release egg and sperm bundles simultaneously in an orgy ...

An individual coral is a polyp. It’s a very small and simple ... the coral eject trillions of eggs and sperm into the water at night. Algae give corals their striking colours.