Sea Bamboo Coral

A very unusual pendant which has been made from a piece of polished sea bamboo coral threaded on to a leather thong.

Bamboo corals are fascinating. They are cosmopolitan, which means they occur in waters all over the world. They can be immensely abundant, often dominating deep-sea communities and forming large, single-species fields, meadows, or stands. Their fleshy polyps are non-retractile, growing upon a calcareous (containing calcium carbonate) skeleton, alternated by horny gorgonian nodes. The bony internodes are increasingly used in jewellery, both in its natural form (bony white) and as a dyed polished form (pinkish-red). One of the deepest recorded occurrences of all deep-sea corals is a bamboo coral (Keratoisis profunda), which was discovered at 4,851 m.