![]() The disease at Killer Pillar was reported to DOE by a local dive company called Cayman Ecodivers. Tammi Warrender working on the diseased Killer Pillar (c) Tammi Warrender Today, it’s estimated that 96 to 99 percent of Florida’s pillar corals have been lost to disease earning the few surviving colonies the epitaph “the last unicorns.” Despite some efforts to mitigate the ravages of the disease, within three years, all but one of those 65 colonies had turned from a vibrant focal point of reef life to a ghost white skeleton soon overgrown with algae. A monitoring program that stretched along the Florida Reef Tract from central Miami-Dade County to southern Palm Beach County tracked 65 individual colonies. Now listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act, pillar corals became a focus of scientists responding to the 2014 disease outbreak in Florida. While never the dominant species in the western Atlantic, pillar corals find themselves in an ever more precarious situation. These “hairs” are actually the individual coral polyps feeding, an unusual sight for many divers, as most corals feed largely at night. ![]() Grey-brown in color, filtered sunlight paints the pillars a golden hue, accentuating the animal’s uncharacteristic hair-like texture. Rising up in majestic, cylindrical columns from the bottom, the namesake pillars can reach two to three meters in height, dwarfing the surrounding coralscape. (c) NOAAįor those of you who have never seen a pillar coral colony, it is truly a spectacular thing to behold. ![]() A juvenile threespot damselfish nestled in a pillar coral colony in St.
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