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They are some of the ocean's smallest 
inhabitants and on coral reefs

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microorganisms are copious creatures. 
Microbes are very prolific on the

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surface of corals, both in healthy and 
diseased corals. But in a world that's

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invisible to the naked eye, drastic 
changes are taking place.

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Whether it's Australia or the Bahamas or the Florida 
Keys, all of the scientists see this

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microbial power shift. With healthy corals, 
when temperatures increase pathogenic

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bacteria go up and the beneficial 
bacteria go down. Just like when we get

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stressed out, we're more likely to get a 
cold. When you stress out these corals

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they could potentially be more susceptible to bleaching or getting a disease.

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Throughout Florida scientists 
painstakingly work to identify key

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players within this microbial community. 
It's estimated that you can only culture

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one percent or the less of the bacteria 
that are out there, but yet corals have

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thousands of different kinds of bacteria 
associated with them. While some of the

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bacteria found on corals are important 
to their health, others can lead to

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disease outbreak. This bacterium that was 
killing the coral, we could hypothesize

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based on what we knew about the 
bacterium that it might be coming from humans.

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Usually we hear about pathogens 
from wildlife to humans - examples are HIV,

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swine flu and avian flu, but we haven't 
had the reverse. And so this is a new

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disease mechanism that we're not familiar 
with, especially in the marine environment.

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With experimental sites in 
the lab and in the sea, what will

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microbes reveal about coral health?

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How do human activities impact the microbial balance on the reef?