A close up of one of the impacted corals and an attached brittle star. A small amount of apparently living tissue on some branches is orange. Most of the skeleton is bare or covered by brown flocculent material. The brittle starfish is a normal symbiont of this type of coral, however the bleached white color is not normal.
 Bare Skeleton
Image courtesy of Lophelia II 2010, NOAA OER and BOEMRE. Download image (jpg, 71 KB).

A close up of one of the impacted corals and an attached brittle star. A small amount of apparently living tissue on some branches is orange. Most of the skeleton is bare or covered by brown flocculent material. The brittle starfish is a normal symbiont of this type of coral, however the bleached white color is not normal.