Elkhorn Coral

Ever since I shot "The Coral Nursery" for Nature Conservancy Magazine, I take special note of the health of the staghorn and elkhorn coral that I come across.  Finding these few, seemingly healthy pieces, meant swimming over fields of long dead coral.  Is it naive to feel hopeful at such a find?  It's hard to think that there is anything put a forecast in the surrounding cemetery.  But yet, there it grows, seemingly oblivious.