One was a 19th-century lithograph from a German encyclopedia. It shows a shallow Indo-Pacific reef. In the foreground, a coral had been depicted with a stark white blemish outlined in black that this was black band disease.
In black band disease, many types of microbes develop together in a finite area. Firstly, The band is spread to coral at up to a centimeter per day. Secondary, It destroying tissue and leaving behind the bare skeleton. Scientists first described BBD in the early 1970s in the Caribbean. Like other coral diseases. But the lithograph suggests that BBD existed a century before scientists discovered it. It may have even been widespread.
Today, scientists know pollution and warming waters make BBD more likely, Richardson adds