UPSC Prelims Current Affairs for 6 October 2025

Coral Triangle Latest News

The Philippines is preparing to host Southeast Asia’s first coral larvae cryobank which links research institutions in the Philippines, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand to create a network of cryobanks across the Coral Triangle.

About Coral Triangle

• It is often referred to as the ‘Amazon of the seas’, is a huge marine area spanning over 10 million square kilometres.
• Countries of coral Triangle: It includes countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Singapore, the Philippines, Timor-Leste, and the Solomon Islands.
• Significance: The Triangle is home to more than three-quarters of the world’s coral species, a third of all reef fish, the vast mangrove forests, and six of the seven marine turtle species.
• It also sustains the food security and livelihoods of more than 120 million people.
• Threats: Growing carbon emissions, destructive fishing, air, water, and soil pollution, and the accelerating effects of climate change are all driving coral bleaching, habitat loss, and species decline.

What are Corals?

• Corals are essentially animals, which are sessile, meaning they permanently attach themselves to the ocean floor.
• Corals share a symbiotic relationship with single-celled algae called zooxanthellae.
• The algae provide the coral with food and nutrients, which they make through photosynthesis, using the sun’s light.
• They use their tiny tentacle-like hands to catch food from the water and sweep into their mouth.
• Each individual coral animal is known as a polyp and it lives in groups of hundreds to thousands of genetically identical polyps that form a ‘colony’.

Source: TH