It's amazing how Mother Nature can restore her children, given enough time. In the case of the corals lining the Bikini Atoll, it's been about half a century since the area suffered from atomic bombardment. Despite that, the coral reefs are alive and kicking again.

Zoe Richards is part of an international team of scientists investigating marine life in the atoll. As a member of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and James Cook University, Richards et al. dived into the Atoll's Bravo Crater left by the 1954 atomic bomb.  An interesting site greeted them within: incredibly huge matrices of Porites coral.

As good as this sounds, there's a flip side to the news: Richards and the team have noted that 42 species of corals that once thrived in the area before the impact are now missing. This means that the coral biodiversity in the Bikini Atoll is only partially resilient. Nevertheless, the scientists reason that these coral reefs may hold valuable lessons for reef management in other areas of the world.