Broad flattened branches like antlers, and the coral that used to build the shallow reef crest across the whole region. Disease and bleaching removed most of it from the 1980s onward and it is now listed as critically endangered.
Colonies to about 3.5 m across, with thick flattened branches spreading like antlers, golden-brown from the symbiotic algae in the tissue. Nothing else in the Caribbean has that shape at that size. The related staghorn coral has thin cylindrical branches instead.
It built the shallow reef crest across the whole western Atlantic, in the top few metres where the surge is strongest, and its structure was what protected the coastline behind it. White band disease removed most of it from the early 1980s, and bleaching and stony coral tissue loss disease have taken more since; it is listed as critically endangered and populations are down by well over ninety per cent in many places. What is seen now is often a restoration plot — fragments grown in an underwater nursery and cemented back onto the reef. That is worth photographing honestly: a healthy-looking thicket may be five years old rather than fifty.
Ratings are per location: 1 means found on most dives that look for it, 5 means a handful of records. Where enough dives have been logged the figure is calculated from them; otherwise it is an editorial estimate, and says so. We publish habitat and destination, not the dive site.
