Waves generated by increasingly strong hurricanes and tropical storms have laid waste to endangered coral reefs by smashing coral branches and overturning colonies.

But an oddball type of free-living coral actually thrives on the energy generated by storms.

Called a corallith, it is known as the rolling stone of the shallow ocean floor.

Coralliths occur when he tumbling motion of wave energy shapes coral into spheres that can grow to be nearly 1.4 meters in diameter, at least in the Florida underwater living boulder field studied by Mark Patterson, a professor at Northeastern’s Marine Science Center.

Read more from NGN Magazine

Photo by Velvetfish / Getty Images