Free Republic

Travel brochures often use coral reef imagery to lure tourists to seemingly tranquil locales. Don't be fooled: Reefs are anything but quiet. And that's a welcome fact if you're a reef fish looking for a place to settle, scientists say. Many reef fish coordinate their egg laying with the tides. That way, their baby fish, or larvae, drift out to sea upon hatching, explained Stephen Simpson, a tropical reef ecologist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. "They do their development at sea, because it's a far safer place to be," Simpson said. The open waters are relatively predator free,...