What is the meaning of fringing coral reef?
The most common type of reef is the fringing reef. This type of reef grows seaward directly from the shore. They form borders along the shoreline and surrounding islands. When a fringing reef continues to grow upward from a volcanic island that has sunk entirely below sea level, an atoll is formed.
What is an example of a fringing reef?
Fringing reefs are the most common type of reef found in the Philippines, Indonesia, Timor-Leste, the western coast of Australia, the Caribbean, East Africa, and Red Sea. The largest fringing coral reef in the world is the Ningaloo Reef, stretching to around 260 km (160 mi) along the coastline of Western Australia.
What is fringing reef in science?
fringing reef, a coral reef (q.v.) consisting of a sea-level flat built out from the shore of an island or continent.
How is fringing reefs formed?
Coral reefs begin to form when free-swimming coral larvae attach to submerged rocks or other hard surfaces along the edges of islands or continents. Fringing reefs, which are the most common, project seaward directly from the shore, forming borders along the shoreline and surrounding islands.
How deep is a fringing reef?
Found frequently in the Bahamas and the Red Sea, fringing reefs are unique in that their backreef region or reef flat (the area between the shore and the reef edge) is consistently shallow, often < 2 m deep (Kennedy and Woodroffe, 2002).
What is the name of the largest barrier reef?
the Great Barrier Reef
Stretching for 1,429 miles over an area of approximately 133,000 square miles , the Great Barrier Reef is the largest coral reef system in the world. The reef is located off the coast of Queensland, Australia, in the Coral Sea.
Is Tahiti a fringing reef?
Thus, the early postglacial reef development around Tahiti consisted of a shore-attached fringing-reef system that was exposed to high-energy open-ocean conditions.
What does backreef mean?
: consisting of or belonging to a restricted lagoon behind barrier reefs a back-reef area back-reef geologic formations.
Why are fringing reefs important?
Fringing reefs protect shorelines from damage due to storm waves and provide protection to other important habitats such as seagrass beds, mangroves and saltmarsh. They support many commercially fished species such as Coral trout (Plectropomus spp.)
What is the size of fringing reef?
180 to 2,400 m2
data): They range in size from 180 to 2,400 m2 and from 4 to more than 30 m in depth. These carbonate banks have between 6 and 14 species of scleractinian corals.
Where is a fringing reef?
Fringing reefs grow near the coastline around islands and continents. They are separated from the shore by narrow, shallow lagoons. Fringing reefs are the most common type of reef. Barrier reefs also parallel the coastline but are separated by deeper, wider lagoons.
Where is the largest fringing reef?
the Ningaloo Reef
The largest fringing reef in the world is the Ningaloo Reef along the western coast of Australia.
What is the most famous fringing coral reef?
The Ningaloo Reef is largest fringing reef in the world, stretching 260 km along the western coast of Australia. It is a very popular destination for snorkelers and scuba divers because of its proximity to the shore.
What is the different between reef and coral?
Difference Between Coral and Reef Coral is a live animal while reef is a physical structure. Reef is the habitat of the corals, which has been created through the secretions of coral polyps over many generations. Corals are always live while a reef could be resulted through either biotic or abiotic processes.
What type of reefs are in the Great Barrier Reef?
The most common type of hard coral found in the Great Barrier Reef is the Staghorn variety, which over time forms limestone casings that become an important building block in the reef’s expansion providing a safe habitat for its many ocean-dwelling creatures to live in.
What is a fringe reef?
A fringing reef is one of the four main types of coral reef recognized by most coral reef scientists. It is distinguished from the other main types ( barrier reefs, platform reefs and atolls) in that it has either an entirely shallow backreef zone (lagoon) or none at all.