Tonga has over 170 islands with some of the most extensive coral reefs in the South Pacific. The archipelago is home to hundreds of reef-building coral species, many of which are difficult to identify even by experts. This field guide to nearly 200 species of the most common corals in Tonga provides a resource for coral reef scientists, managers, monitoring teams, and anyone else interested in learning about reef-building corals. Corals are presented in the conventional taxonomic order, because it puts corals that are morphologically similar together, which facilitates learning to distinguish them. A few modifications of that order have been introduced to help put similar looking species closer together. This guide presently has 171 coral species in 56 genera.
