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This may look like a disembodied mouth full of pearly whites, but these aren’t teeth at all; they’re soft digestive tissues inside a colorful coral polyp.

Corals are mainly colonial animals, and a single coral can comprise thousands of polyps—repeating units, each with its own digestive system—such as the one shown in this photograph that I took while looking down on brain coral.

I captured this image in my research lab at the University of British Columbia. There, members of my lab have worked over the past 10 years to identify, classify, and learn the biology of a new kind of microscopic coral parasite, part of a group called corallicolids. Learning more about these parasites is important, as they likely affect reef health. Researchers in Spain have already shown that our new parasite decreases corals’ chances of surviving bleaching events.

Having access to corals in aquariums allows me to take detailed close-ups without getting wet. I snapped this shot using a specialized probe lens—a long tube that can be submerged to zoom in on small marine animals. When you get up close with bright lights, corals appear even more spectacular than they do from a distance.