WEBVTT

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So this gold coral originally started on a bamboo coral and it overgrew that skeleton and then started growing its own skeleton.

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It's like putting a glove on your hand, it's fully covered by the gold coral tissue.

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And there's a period of time where the gold coral tissue can consume the host rapidly,

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and then it's very slow growth after that.

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This is a prime example of a before and after shot,

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you have the bamboo coral on the right side and the gold coral on the left.

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There is a bamboo coral that looks like it is in its first stage of being colonized by a gold coral colony.

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So we say that this coral is in the Midas stage of turning to gold.

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These corals grow extremely slowly, so to have something this large, it's likely that this colony is possibly 2,000 years old.