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Real coral colonies · laser-scanned · public domain
Smithsonian & the Hydrous
drag to orbit · scroll to zoom
tap a glowing point to name the coral
Every colony here is a real coral specimen from the collections of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, laser-scanned in partnership with the Hydrous — a non-profit building "open-access oceans" — and released to the public domain. Nothing is modelled or invented: what you orbit is scan geometry, down to the individual corallites.
Corals are animals: colonies of tiny polyps that build limestone skeletons, and it is those skeletons, the architecture of the reef, that these scans preserve. Reefs cover less than a percent of the sea floor yet shelter roughly a quarter of all marine species — including the reefs of the Philippines, which sit at the heart of the Coral Triangle, the most biodiverse marine region on Earth.
This is part of LANTAW's Inside wing — real things, from real scan data. Tap a glowing point to identify each species and read its museum catalogue record.