---
title: Bubble Coral (Plerogyra sinuosa)
scientific_name: Plerogyra sinuosa
common_name: Bubble Coral
taxon: Hard corals
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-01-02T19:46:27.431Z
updated: 2026-08-12T12:35:01.123Z
tags: Bubble Coral, Plerogyra sinuosa, Hard corals, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/stinging/hard-corals/bubble-coral
---

# Bubble Coral (*Plerogyra sinuosa*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Hard corals (*Scleractinia*)
- **Size:** colonies to 1 m; bubbles 2-3 cm
- **Depth:** 3-40 m
- **Diet:** Planktivore
- **Activity:** Cathemeral
- **Rarity:** Common
- **Habitat:** Shaded reef, under overhangs and on protected slopes
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner, Budding, Gonochoric
- **Hazard:** Venomous
- **CITES:** Appendix II
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- clusters of grape-sized translucent bubbles, inflated by day
- bubbles deflate at night and long stinging tentacles come out between them
- grows in shaded places rather than in bright sun
- bubbles 2 to 3 cm across

Clusters of translucent grape-sized bubbles, inflated by day into a mound that looks nothing like a stony coral and hides one underneath. Each bubble is a fluid-filled sac of tissue on a hard skeleton, and it is a solar panel.

The cycle explains the shape. Bubbles swell in daylight to spread the coral's symbiotic algae into the light across the largest possible surface; after dark they shrink and long stinging tentacles come out between them to catch plankton. So the animal alternates between farming and hunting on a twelve-hour clock, and the daytime bubbles and the night-time tentacles are the same colony.

It grows in the shade, on protected slopes and under overhangs, because too much light bleaches it - which is why it turns up in exactly the places divers look for macro subjects.

And it is inhabited. Bubble corals regularly host a small transparent shrimp that lives nowhere else, plus commensal crabs, and the shrimp is easier to find than to photograph: it sits between the bubbles and moves as they do. A colony that looks empty rarely is.

## Also known as

- **English:** bubble coral, grape coral, rounded bubblegum coral
- **French:** Corail à bulles sinueux
- **Italian:** Corallo a bolle
- **German:** Blasenkoralle
- **Czech:** turbinatka lištovitá
- **Japanese:** ミズタマサンゴ
- **Chinese:** 卷曲氣泡珊瑚
- **Ukrainian:** Плерогіра пухирчаста
- **Russian:** Плерогира извилистая
- **TH:** ปะการังลูกโป่งใหญ่

## Scientific synonyms

- *Euphyllia cultrifera* Dana, 1846
- *Euphyllia sinuosa* Dana, 1846
- *Plerogyra cultrifera* (Dana, 1846)
- *Plerogyra excavata* Milne Edwards & Haime, 1848
- *Plerogyra laxa* Milne Edwards & Haime, 1848

## Range

Ashmore-Cartier Is., Australia, East Africa, East Indies, Indian Ocean, Kenya, Madagascar, Maldives, Mozambique, North Pacific Ocean, Papua New Guinea, Red Sea, Republic of Mauritius, South Pacific Ocean

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/stinging/hard-corals/bubble-coral)*
*Updated: August 12, 2026*