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Gray reef sharks and red snappers hover above a patch of table coral, waiting for prey fish to emerge. "They go after everything that moves," observed Enric Sala, a marine ecologist on Spain's National Council for Scientific Research and a National Geographic fellow.

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Spectacle of color and shape, hard coral carpets a shallow seafloor on Kingman Reef. Scientists visiting the remote Pacific Ocean atoll reef describe it as a "time machine," an ecosystem that has survived in an almost pure state of nature.

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Needle-sharp teeth matched with voracious hunger make the red snapper the reef's most aggressive predator. Reaching lengths of 30 inches, snappers sometimes attacked the divers, biting at ears and hair.

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A thicket of tentacles belonging to Heteractis magnifica, the magnificent sea anemone, provides cover for a transparent shrimp the size of a rice grain.

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Parading colors of sun and sky, a lemonpeel angelfish shows itself in the lagoon at Kingman Reef.

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On a gorgeous reef perfect for idle sightseeing, researchers dutifully focus on work. Ecologist Jennifer Smith (foreground), of the University of California at Santa Barbara, deploys a photoquadrat frame above lobe coral to document meter-square segments along a transect line.

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Clearing everything in their path, crown-of-thorns sea stars hungrily advance across a lobe coral, stripping it to a bony white skeleton.

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A blue damselfish doesn't swim far from a sheltering coral colony.

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The divers who found it said that from a distance it looked like a flying saucer. On closer examination, ecologist Enric Sala sees a stupendous lobe coral that may be 500 years old.

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Wary of being eaten, a fang blenny, just a few inches long, feels safe in its coral hideout. Fang blennies do take risks, venturing out to feed on scales, fins, and even mucus coating the skin of larger fish.

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A combtooth blenny, only a few inches long, hides from predators.

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Ambush specialist, a blackside hawkfish lurks amid coral to surprise smaller fish and crustaceans.

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