In the year 2008 two books addressing Deep-Water Coral reefs were published:
- Deep-Water Coral reefs, Unique biodiversity hot-spots, by M. Hovland, and
- Cold-Water Corals, The biology and geology of Deep-Sea Coral habitats, by Murray Roberts, et al.
The question some years later, is: which one of these two denominations, which refer to the same seafloor features should we now prefer to use. It seems obvious that when the water depth is more than about 200 m, e.g., deeper than solar light penetration into the ocean, both the water temperature is cool and the water depth can be characterized as being 'deep'. The Corals and Coral reef occurring in such zones of the Ocean, could rather be called 'Deep-Water Corals' than 'Cold-Water Corals'.
A literature search on the web, turned out the following results, which supports this conclusion:
In a simple search for the terms
1) Deep-water corals
2) Cold-water corals
3) Deep-water coral reefs
4) Cold-water coral reefs
The following hit numbers were found:
1) 52 000 hits
2) 43 700 hits
3) 22 100 hits
4) 16 700 hits.
The search was done via www.ScholarGoogle.com and clearly shows an abundance of deep-water corals used instead of cold-water Corals.
The conclusion is that 'Cold-water corals' seems to be a misnomer, and the other term: Deep-Water Corals and Deep-Water Coral reefs should be preferred in the future.
It seems the second book mentioned above, was published in 2009, not 2008, sorry.
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