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Coral reefs represent some of the world's most spectacular beauty spots, but they are also the foundation of marine life: without them many of the sea's most exquisite species will not survive.

The coral that grows at the edge of the reef is always the strongest and most colourful because it faces the greatest battering. It's the same if you're called Honeysuckle. I'd have had a totally different life if I'd been called Mary.

The corals do not look much worn, but still appear to have been dead. There are some delicate shells of molluscs from depths beyond 500 fathoms, where they were certainly living.

For where Kingman is located, the coral cover is unique in the world. I refer to it as a universe of hard corals. You are not going to find soft corals like in the western Pacific - places like Indonesia, Palau, or Fiji.

I have touched coral, and it feels hard like a rock, with a little slimy thing on top of it. But it is better to not touch coral, to prevent damaging it.

I'm obsessed with great white sharks. And I want to dive into the coral of the Great Barrier Reef.

The juvenile sea squirt wanders through the sea searching for a suitable rock or hunk of coral to cling to and make its home for life. For this task, it has a rudimentary nervous system. When it finds its spot and takes root, it doesn't need its brain anymore so it eats it!

If you go to the octopus, and if you're not too squeamish, dissect it. You'll find that it has a camera eye which is remarkable similar to our own. And yet we know that the octopus belongs to an invertebrate group called cephalopod mulluses, evolutionarily very distant indeed from the chordates to which we belong.

I think that most people would associate big schools of fish with healthy coral reefs. At Kingman, the predators keep the herd thin, so there aren't a lot of big fish schools.

Octopus can fish for prey while deciding what color and pattern to turn, what shape to make their bodies, be on alert for predators and aware how far away their dens are.