Atoll

Atoll (native name atollon in the Maldive Islands), a horse-shoe or ring shaped coral reef enclosing a lagoon. The usual shape is that of a partly submerged dish with a broken edge, forming the ring of islands, standing upon a conical pedestal. The dish is formed of coral rock and the shells of various reef-dwelling mollusca, covered, especially at the seaward edges, with a film of living coral polyps that continually extend the fringe, and enlarge the diameter of the atoll. The lagoon tends to deepen when the land is stationary by the death of the coral animals in the still water, and the patchy disintegration of the “hard” coral, while waves and storms tear off blocks of rock and pile them up at the margin, increasing the height of the islands, which become covered by vegetation. The lagoon entrance in the open part of the horse-shoe is always to leeward of prevailing winds, since the coral growth is there slower than where the waves constantly renew the polyps’ food supply. The conical pedestal rising from the depths is frequently a submarine volcanic cone or island, though any submerged peak may be crowned by an atoll. For the theory of atoll formation see Coral-reefs.