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What Role Do Coastal Reefs Play in the Marine Life Food Chain?

Coral reefs are actually marine animals that play a very important role in the ecology of the ocean. The most diverse communities on the whole planet, coral reefs are often compared to rain-forests because they produce food and medicine for a wide variety of sea creatures and provide shelter and habitat for even more. In the marine life food chain, coral reefs supports a large interconnected web of food relationships, and without them many species would die off.

Marine Life Food Chain
- In a strictly linear sense, the marine life food chain begins with phytoplankton and zooplankton, the vegetable and animal forms of plankton respectively. The zoo plankton feeds on the phytoplankton and is in turn eaten by small fish, who are then eaten by large fish all the way up to marine mammals such as seals and whales. In a coral reef system, the coral reef supports a divers number of fish that feed off of the vegetation that grows on the coral. Some creatures, such as sea urchins, actually feed on the coral itself. By supporting a variety of life, the coral reef also provides food for larger creatures looking for small fish. The food chain of the coral reef system is diverse and interdependent.
Coral Reef Food System
- Coral reefs are actually made of of hundreds of thousands of tiny organisms that feed off of phtyoplankton and create hard calcium-rich deposits that they live in. These calcium deposits build up over time to become the reef itself. The coral supports a large amount of marine animal and vegetable life, which in turn supports a large amount of fish life, some species entirely dependent on the coral reef. According to the Ecological Society of America, coral reefs provide critical habitat to 10 percent to 20 percent of the world's fish.
Importance of Coral Reefs
- Coral Reefs only occur in areas of shallow clear water, which indicate the water is nutrient poor and low on phytoplankton. Thus coral reefs fulfill a vital role in the ocean's food chain by turning otherwise barren and inhospitable waters into a highly diverse ecosystem that supports a huge variety of life. In their communities, coral reefs are the backbone of the food chain, supporting multiple complex inter-relationships at the same time.
Threats to Coral Reefs
- Coral reefs are under threat from global warming and human activities such as oil drilling. The complex food webs that coral reefs support are dependent on the tiny coral organisms that make the coral structures in the first place. These organisms are highly sensitive to fluctuations in the temperature change of the water and are easily disrupted by changes in the environment.

Nature