“In the shadow of multimillion-dollar mansions and towering high-rises, beneath the daily roar of cruise and container ships, there is a colony of corals that’s not supposed to exist.

The corals, found in PortMiami, part of Florida’s largest city, grow on discarded shopping carts and on concrete and stone breakwaters. They reach sizes that astonish scientists and attract fish, manatees, and turtles to this busy port, and include two species—elkhorn and staghorn corals—that have been declared functionally extinct elsewhere in Florida. And these corals have stolidly weathered waves of disease, cloudy waters from dredging and pollution, and extreme highs and lows in temperatures. In a time when corals have a reputation for fragility, PortMiami’s tell a different story. “

From bioGraphic.