Angler Catches A Coral Head In The Indian River Inlet

Coral Heads Growing In The Indian River Inlet

I have been cleaning up old external hard drives, looking at pictures taken a decade ago. Needless to say I have tens of thousands of pictures from the past ten years. I forgot all about these coral pictures.
About six or seven years ago I dropped by the Indian River Inlet and was talking to a friend who was fishing when he snagged the wall. He yanked hard on his line and up popped this coral head with his bucktail embedded in the center. We freed the bucktail and took some pictures of the coral head. Then we put the coral back into the water near the surface so I could collect it later. I know these are protected, I figured someone at the state or DNREC would like to identify it. As well as know coral like this is growing in the Indian River Inlet. There wasn’t much interest. It was about the size of a softball.

Cold water corals grow in the Atlantic ocean. The fact this perfect of a specimen was “caught” in the inlet was amazing. I used to grow corals for my saltwater aquarium store, another lifetime ago. I was fascinated. I contacted the state, but no one believed this perfect a specimen came off the inlet rock wall. “It probably washed into the inlet and he snagged it.”
That is literally impossible. This coral head was in perfect shape, no wear or tear as you can see in the pictures. Any coral head rolling, or washing into the inlet would have damaged the tissue on the skeleton. Not to mention probably broken a few branches off.
This coral head without any doubt was growing on the rock wall. I wish I had a picture of the bottom, I could see where it had broken off the wall.
When I went back to find the coral head it was gone, probably washed into the inlet by the current. The only way to fully identify a coral is taxonomy, or using a piece of the skeleton. I have always been curious if there is more at the bottom of the inlet.