U.S. seeks to protect 66 kinds of coral
A researcher counts fish swimming around a coral reef at Palmyra Atoll in the central Pacific in August 2005. The U.S. federal government on Friday, November 30, 2012, proposed protecting 66 kinds of corals under the Endangered Species Act, an acknowledgment that these reef-building animals are suffering so many insults they are threatened with extinction. (Rick Loomis/Los Angeles Times/MCT)