The golden cowrie is a marine snail named for its brilliant orange shell.

It is among the largest of the world's 250 known cowrie species, reaching four in length. These mollusks are rare to find and, spend most of their lives hiding under rocks in the cracks and creases of reefs in the South Pacific.

Coral reefs in the Indian and Pacific Oceans are dying off much quicker than previously thought, a new study shows.

They come out only at night to feed on sponges and algae. And for the last few days the Coral Reefs vanashed more than one third, Indo-Pacific reefs have shrunk by 1 percent each year a loss equivalent to nearly 600 square miles . That makes the rate of reef loss about twice the rate of tropical rain forest loss. Twenty or 30 years ago reefs with a high cover of coral were fairly common. Today there are comparatively few reefs in the Indo-Pacific that we would traditionally think of as being pristine.