This often-overlooked sea creature may be quietly protecting the planet's coral reefs

"You can just break off a branch from a coral, plant it into the sandy bottom, and it will grow into a whole new coral," explains Clements."I have corals out there that I've planted and they were the size of my pinky — and now they're the size of a basketball."

But a few days later,"I started seeing that the corals were starting to die from the base up," Clements says."And I was just like, 'OK, this is pretty abnormal.'" "And so they must have been super abundant at one time," says Hay."And so we had wanted to , 'OK, if there were that many of them, what were they doing? And what's their real role in the world?'"

It all happened so fast, Clements recalls. And before he knew it, the eel — uncharacteristically — let him go. Clements thought he might bleed out, but fortunately he made it back to his boat and then to shore. The local hospital patched him up the best they could, but ultimately he went to Tahiti where a top-notch hand surgeon managed to reattach his thumb.Ten weeks later, he was back in the water to begin his experiments anew.

"We think of these sea cucumbers as little Roombas that run around and take sand in," says Hay."They digest microbes out of it. And so the waste that would otherwise accumulate on the bottom — it's not being left there to heat up and grow microbes, many of which could be pathogenic."

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