Coral reef to form fringing reefs, and can eventually grow become a barrier reef. Where the bottom is rising, fringing reefs can grow around the coast, but coral raised above sea level dies. If the land subsides slowly, the fringing reefs keep pace by growing upwards on a base of older, dead coral, forming a barrier reef enclosing a lagoon between the reef and the land. A barrier reef can encircle an island, and once the island sinks below sea level a roughly circular atoll of growing coral continues to keep up with the sea level, forming a central lagoon. Barrier reefs
Coral reef that build reefs. In the early Cambrian period, "Archaeocyatha" sponges were the world's first reef-building organisms, and sponges were the only reef-builders until the Ordovician. Sclerosponges still assist corals building modern reefs, but like coralline algae are much slower-growing than corals and their contribution is (usually) minor. In the northern Pacific Ocean cloud sponges still create deep-water mineral-structures without corals, although the structures are not recognizable from the surface like tropical reefs. They are the only extant organisms known to build reef-like structures in cold water. In "The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs", published in 1842, Darwin described how