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FAITH LAPIDUS: Researchers in the Netherlands Antilles have discovered what they believe is the secret to how young coral find their way home. They use sound from coral reefs to guide them.

Researchers at the University of Bristol in England discovered similar movements among baby reef fish several years ago. A research team at the Carmabi Foundation in Curacao carried out experiments to see if the same was true for baby coral.

The team designed a device it called a choice chamber. Each chamber offered the coral larvae two opposing conditions. One was silence. The other was the recorded sound of a coral reef.

The researchers described what happened when they placed the coral larvae into the chamber. They said the larvae nearly always chose to follow the sound as they sought a place to call home. With this latest discovery, the researchers say noise pollution in coral environments raises yet another cause for concern for these organisms.

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BOB DOUGHTY: Coral reefs exist in underwater colonies. These communities make up some of the largest living structures on earth. Some are so large that they can be seen from space.

Coral reefs were listed as plants until seventeen fifty-three. That year a French biologist who had been studying reefs in the western Atlantic discovered that they are animals. His name was J.A. de Peysonnell.

FAITH LAPIDUS: Corals are anthozoans, the largest class of organisms in the cnidaria group. Jellyfish, anemones and seafans are part of the same family. Corals are non-moving animals. They stay positioned in one place. They capture food by seizing it with their long tentacles.