Coral reefs can extend more than 1,000 miles, but they are made by coral polyps as small as one sixteenth of an inch. Few American and Israeli scientists built a new microscope to study corals in nature, which is the first microscope made for use on the seafloor that is powerful enough to show details, almost as small as one micron, of living corals in their natural state. Divers can use the system, which includes a flexible lens for focusing and does not disturb the corals, since it can be placed a couple of inches away from them. Scientists developed the tool to study what happens during coral bleaching and its aftermath. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/13/science/seafloor-microscope-coral.html Paper: http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160712/ncomms12093/full/ncomms12093.html
