Lustrous, bright red coral makes a beautiful necklace or bracelet, the fiery colour setting off skin tones to perfection. Coral like this is prized by jewellers as it can be carved into exquisite shapes without losing its perfect shine.
Coral, as everyone knows, grows in reefs at the bottom of the sea, created over hundreds or even thousands of years by tiny polyps, providing a nursery and hunting ground for multitudinous species of fish. These reefs, according to SeaWeb, an ocean conservation charity, are “in crisis”, dead and dying from “overharvesting that stems from high consumer demand [for coral], as well as from pollution, destructive fishing and rising sea temperatures”.
