Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG update

Mortgage rules likely to curtail buying of new homes in Ireland,

ECONOMIC THINK TANK SAYS HOUSING SUPPLY WILL BE REDUCED BY 5% OVER FOUR YEARS

     

OVER THE NEXT THREE OR FOUR YEARS HOUSE PRICES ARE LIKELY TO BE ON AVERAGE 3.5% LOWER THAN WHERE THEY WOULD HAVE BEEN WITHOUT THE CENTRAL BANK MORTGAGE RULES, AN ESRI REPORT HAS FOUND.

The Central Bank’s mortgage lending rules are likely to curtail the supply of new homes by up to 5% over the next four years, the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) has warned.

In a research paper published with its latest quarterly report, the institute found the impact of the restrictions had yet to fully play out because of the lag effect in construction, albeit there has been a sizeable dip in new mortgage lending.

However, it said this would change over the next three to four years with house prices likely to be on average 3.5% lower than where they would have been without the rules.

This decline will lead to reduced profitability in construction, which will lower the number of housing units completed in each quarter by about 5 per cent, and reduce the State’s overall housing stock by about 0.5%.

The finding comes as the Central Bank conducts its first review of the rules, which were introduced in February 2015 to prevent the housing market from overheating again.

They require first-time buyers to have a 10% deposit for the first €220,000 of a house price and 20% for the balance while all other buyers must have a 20% deposit in place.

In addition, the Central Bank requires that income limits of 3.5 times are applied by the banks before approving mortgages.

A recent consultation process, which will inform the bank’s review, yielded 50 submissions, several of which called for the threshold below which first-time buyers have to pay only a 10% deposit to be raised from the current level of €220,000.

Kieran McQuinn of the ESRI said the measures had had a contractionary impact on the housing market in terms of reducing prices, supply and mortgage lending below levels the would have otherwise pertained.

He said they had made it more difficult for potential buyers to raise downpayments and pushed more people into the rental market. This explained why rents were rising at an even greater rate than property prices.

Boom years

A recent report by property website Daft found that rents were now above what they were during the boom years, with annual inflation in Dublin, where the housing shortage is most acute, running at 11%.

Dr McQuinn said the ESRI fully supported the need for macroprudential measures but the rules needed to incorporate room for a “counter-cyclical dimension”to reflect the current supply shortages.

The institute does not expect housing completions to increase to 25,000, the level needed to meet demand, until after 2018. Property Industry Ireland, the Ibec group that represents the sector, predicts that completions this year will only amount to about 14,000.

In its latest quarterly commentary, the ESRI downgraded its growth forecasts amid concern over global demand linked to weakness in the Chinese economy and because of Brexit-related issues.

It predicted GDP, the standard measure of economic growth, would expand by 4.3% this year and by 3.8% in 2017.

On the 26% GDP growth recorded for last year, the think tank acknowledged nobody could take this rate seriously.

Michael Noonan agrees to now appear before the Public Accounts Committee

  

THE FINANCE MINISTER MICHAEL NOONAN HAS TONIGHT BOWED TO PRESSURE AND WILL NOW APPEAR BEFORE THE PUBLIC ACCOUNTS COMMITTEE (PAC) OVER NAMA’S CONTROVERSIAL SALE OF ITS NORTHERN IRELAND LOAN BOOK, 

Mr Noonan was told by Independent Ministers including Finian McGrath and Shane Ross at Cabinet today that it would be better if he attended the committee and try and “kill off” the controversy.

While ministers agreed that it was Mr Noonan’s decision to make, he was left in no doubt as to the feelings of his colleagues, sources have said.

“I have today decided to accept the invitation of the Committee of Public Accounts to assist the Committee in its examination of the C&AG’s Special Report on the National Asset Management Agency’s sale of Project Eagle,” Mr Noonan said in a statement.

“I intend to reply by letter to the Committee of Public Accounts to confirm this and to request assurances from the Committee that the proceedings of the Committee will be conducted in line with its terms of reference,” he added.

Members of the PAC welcomed Mr Noonan’s announcement.

Sinn Féin Deputy Leader Mary Lou McDonald TD said his decision to face questions is in the public interest.

“After a weekend of stalling, Minister Noonan has reversed his decision and has agreed to come before the Public Accounts Committee to address concerns regarding the sale of NAMA’s northern loan-book. I welcome his decision as it is, without question, in the public interest that he explain why he failed to suspend to sale when he became aware of the operation of fixer fees,” she said.

“He must explain why he, as Minister for Finance, failed to protect the interests of the citizens of this state. Minister Noonan now needs to open the books, assist the PAC inquiry, and not engage in further prevarication,” she added.

Last week, Nama rejected a report which says that it could have sold loans based in Northern Ireland for more than £1.32 billion.

The long-awaited Comptroller and Auditor General’s (C&AG) report into the sale of Project Eagle was published today, saying that the agency could have made more than that.

The report found that the State lost around £190 million (€220 million).

The C&AG report found that Nama had over-discounted the loans, giving 10-15% discounts where 5.5% would be more applicable. It added that NAMA did not keep an “adequate record of key decisions and events even though the sales process deviated from standard”.

Micheál Martin claims the elimination of water charges would not erode our tax base

   

FIANNA FÁIL LEADER MICHEÁL MARTIN TD ADDRESSES THE MEDIA PRIOR TO THE ANNUAL PARLIAMENTARY PARTY THINK-IN AT THE SEVEN OAKS HOTEL, CARLOW.

Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin has rejected a European Commission report that said the elimination of water charges would erode the tax base.

The Commission’s remarks came in its latest post-bailout report in the Irish economy.

Mr Martin said scrapping water charges is “not an erosion of the tax base because it’s made a very negligible contribution to the widening of the tax base in the last three years.”

He was speaking after his party’s Co Carlow think-in where he also responded to a study by the Irish Tax Institute that outlined how workers are paying the top rate of income tax before their salaries reached the average industrial wage.

The Fianna Fáil TD was asked if the party should rethink its policy of pushing for spending measures over tax cuts as a result of the study.

Mr Martin said he was committed to its position that there should be a 2:1 break-down of spending to tax cuts in the upcoming Budget.

“There’s absolutely no question but that we do have to invest in health, in education and housing and give people some decent quality of life in terms of access to those services,” he added.

He said there “is a case” for tax cuts but that a balance has to be struck.

“We need to be mindful of the risks to the Irish economy not least the Brexit risks and proceed in a cautious manner,” he added.

Meanwhile he said he doesn’t think it will be achievable or the right policy to abolish the USC in five years as Finance Minister Michael Noonan today told an Oireachtas committee he’d like to do.

Mr Martin responded to this saying: “I don’t believe it’s achievable”.

“We don’t believe its the right policy or the right approach,” he said adding that there needs to be a balance between investing in services and infrastructure and giving people a break in their taxes.

Irish teens are smoking and drinking less according to a new European survey says

NEW SURVEY RAISES CONCERNS OVER YOUNG PEOPLE’S DRUG USE AND INTERNET BEHAVIOUR

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SMOKING AND DRINKING HAVE DECLINED AMONG IRISH SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS, ACCORDING TO A NEW EUROPEAN SURVEY.

Smoking and drinking have declined among Irish secondary school students, but new concerns are emerging in relation to drugs and addictive behaviours associated with the internet, a new European survey has claimed.

Fewer Irish teenagers are drinking and smoking, according to the European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs (ESPAD)’s 2015 report, which looked at the behaviour of 15- to 16-year-olds.

However, Irish respondents reported slightly higher than average rates in use of illicit drugs other than cannabis during their lifetime, lifetime use of inhalants and lifetime use of new psychoactive substances.

The ESPAD report also said more than one in 10 Irish teenagers gambled for money frequently.

Use of alcohol within the last 30 days and the rate of heavy episodic drinking were less common among Irish respondents, compared with the average in the survey.

Thirty-five per cent of Irish teenagers reported drinking alcohol during the past 30 days, compared with a European average of 48 per cent, while 28 per cent of Irish teenagers reported heavy episodic drinking during the past 30 days, compared with a 35 per cent average.

The same was true for cigarette use during the last 30 days, which stood at 13 per cent among Irish respondents, compared with the European average of 21 per cent.

The ESPAD’s findings are based on a survey undertaken in 2015 in 35 European countries, including 24 EU member states.

A total of 96,043 students, including 1,400 from Ireland, participated in the survey, responding in school to an anonymous questionnaire.

The ESPAD’s report highlighted overall “positive developments” in the area of cigarette-smoking.

“Today, the majority of adolescents have never smoked (54 per cent) and less than one-quarter (21 per cent) of the sample can be considered current smokers,” it said.

The survey identified “high rates of alcohol use” among European teenagers, but said trends over the past two decades point to positive developments.

It recorded a decrease in lifetime and last-30-day use of alcohol among teenagers between 1995 and 2015, from 89 per cent to 81 per cent and from 56 per cent to 47 per cent respectively

However, it said changes in heavy episodic drinking were less pronounced and only observed among boys, going from 36 per cent to 35 per cent in the past 20 years.

On internet use, survey respondents said they had used the internet an average of 5.8 days within the last seven days.

Welcomed reaction

Responding to the study, Alcohol Action Ireland said it welcomed some of the trends in alcohol consumption among Irish teenagers but said alcohol should not be a part of any 15- or 16-year-old’s life.

“One of the most disappointing aspects of this survey is that over three-quarters of Irish 15- and 16-year-olds still find it easy to obtain alcohol, which is reflective of both the massive increase of the availability of alcohol in outlets throughout Ireland in recent years and the ongoing failure of the current regulations.”

Ministers of State for Health Marcella Corcoran Kennedy and Catherine Byrne welcomed the survey results on alcohol and cigarettes.

Ms Byrne said a particular focus of the Government’s National Drugs Strategy consultation was “getting the views of young people on the measures required to tackle the issue into the future”.

The survival secret of the ‘earth’s hardiest animal’ is now revealed

  

MEET THE PLANET’S HARDIEST ANIMAL IT’S THE TARDIGRADE AND IT HAS JUST REVEALED A GENETIC SECRET THAT COULD HELP PROTECT HUMAN CELLS.

Researchers have discovered a genetic survival secret of Earth’s “hardiest animal”.

A gene that scientists identified in these strange, aquatic creatures – called tardigrades – helps them survive boiling, freezing and radiation.

In future, it could be used to protect human cells, the researchers say.

It was already known that tardigrades, also known as water bears, were able to survive by shrivelling up into desiccated balls.

But the University of Tokyo-led team found a protein that protects its DNA – wrapping around it like a blanket.

The scientists, who published their findings in the journal Nature Communications, went on to grow human cells that produced that same protein, and found that it protected those cells too.

This, the scientists suggest, means that genes from these “extremophiles”, might one day be used to protect living things from radiation – from X-rays, or as a treatment to prevent damage from the Sun’s harmful rays.

Tardigrades are more commonly – and cutely – known as water bears. Scientists had thought that they survived radiation exposure by repairing the damage done to their DNA. But Prof Takekazu Kunieda, of the University of Tokyo, and his colleagues, carried out an eight-year study of a tardigrade genome to pinpoint the source of its remarkable resilience.

EXTREME GENETICS

To identify their secret weapon, researchers scrutinised the genome of one tardigrade species, looking for proteins that were attached to the DNA, and that therefore might have a protective mechanism. They found one that they have called “Dsup” (short for “damage suppressor”).

The team then inserted the Dsup gene into human cells’ DNA, and exposed those modified cells to X-rays; Dsup-treated cells suffered far less DNA damage.

Prof Mark Blaxter of the University of Edinburgh told BBC News that the study was “groundbreaking”.

“This is the first time an individual protein from a tardigrade has been shown to be active in radiation protection.

“[And] radiation is one of the things that’s guaranteed to kill you.”

By sequencing and examining the genome, this study also appears to resolve a strange genetic controversy about these creatures. Research published in 2015, involving a different tardigrade species, concluded that the creature had “acquired” a portion of its DNA from bacteria through a process called horizontal gene transfer.

That study suggested that some of these beasts’ notorious imperviousness had been snipped out of the bacterial genetic code.

This study found no evidence of this gene transfer.

The tardigrades themselves, though, were far more resistant to X-rays than the human cells that the researchers manipulated. “[So] tardigrades have other tricks up their sleeves, which we have yet to identify,” said Prof Matthew Cobb from the University of Manchester.

With further research, scientists think that genes like Dsup could make it safer and easier to store and transport human cells – protecting, for example, delicate human skin grafts from damage. Prof Kunieda and his co-author on the study, Takuma Hashimoto, applied to patent the Dsup gene in 2015.

Prof Cobb added that, in principle, “these genes could even help us bioengineer organisms to survive in extremely hostile environments, such as on the surface of Mars – [perhaps] as part of a terra-forming project to make the planet hospitable for humans”.

And scientists with a fascination for tardigrades think this discovery could be the tip of the iceberg.

Prof Blaxter said that tardigrade research could even explain how exactly “radiation damages DNA, and how we might prevent DNA damage from other sources”.

Prof Takekazu Kunieda told BBC News that he hoped more researchers would join the “tardigrade community”.

“We believe there [are] a lot of treasures there,”   

Donie's ireland daily news BLOG

Ireland should now plan to cut 12.5% corporation tax rate & steal a march on Brexit

   

Michael Noonan Minister for finance and Ibec policy chief Fergal O’Brien.

THE IRISH GOVERNMENT SHOULD GO ON THE OFFENSIVE AND CONSIDER CUTTING THE 12.5% CORPORATION TAX RATE, AND PREPARE AN “AGGRESSIVE” STRATEGY IN THE BUDGET TO PREPARE FOR ANY FALLOUT FROM THE DECISION OF THE UK TO QUIT THE EU, BUSINESS GROUP IBEC HAS SAID.

In a new policy document, the business group also advises the Government to temporarily secure a break on the EU spending rules and splash €1bn in building social housing next year.

It says a massive programme to build new social homes – the largest in the history of the State – is the only way to start to address the housing crisis.

Ibec said its new document, called ‘IBEC priorities for budget 2017’, represents a call to arms for the Government to respond in a new way to the threat of the Brexit on Irish businesses.

“The most important thing about this budget is it is seen as a Brexit response. A real aggressive drive is required.

“The Government has sat on its hands – but we have already seen [UK chancellor] George Osborne setting the terms for the UK government what they want to do with corporation tax cuts to 15%, possibly lower,” said Ibec policy chief Fergal O’Brien.

“The UK has laid down the gauntlet on its business tax ambitions, Ireland must now respond,” he said. “We are looking for a more aggressive approach”.

Ibec said a corporate tax rate cut should be part of the Government’s armoury, the budget should address the immediate challenges of the Brexit vote.

It said it was most concerned about the Irish indigenous companies which now face financial pain because of the slump in the value of sterling against the euro since the Brexit vote on June 23.

Ibec urges more favourable tax terms for the self-employed to match and compete with the incentives the UK offers its entrepreneurs, in capital gains and in the taxing of share awards.

“Sterling is a massive issue. This budget has to be about reacting to Brexit and addressing those competitive concerns which will help Irish business to be more competitive,” Mr O’Brien said.

“We think it would be completely illogical for example to increase our minimum wage to impact on those sectors such as food processing, tourism, retail and indigenous exporters, who are trying to cope with an exchange rate,” he said.

Mr O’Brien said Irish companies were already suffering after the plunge in sterling and it was up to Government to control business costs.

“Not that many companies are hedging. The majority of the smaller companies are going to be exposed really quickly,” he said, adding that proposals to introduce a sugar tax and raise excise duties on tobacco would hurt retailers.

“The UK is going to take out the bazooka. If they are outside the EU, they are going to act on state-aid issues.

“We are going to have to react. The budget is the first opportunity for the Government to show what they can do for indigenous companies,” Mr O’Brien said.

Ibec said that cutting the USC rate would not help businesses. It said its tax measures would cost €469m and its recommendations for spending on infrastructure and research and development would cost an extra €250m.

Spending on social housing would be covered by the Government securing a derogation from EU spending rules, Ibec said.

Ex-Nama ‘big player employee’ used inside knowledge to buy Dublin site, 

THE WEXFORD TD WALLACE ASKS TAOISEACH WHY HARCOURT STREET GARDA PREMISES WAS SOLD TO ‘VULTURE FUND’

  

INDEPENDENTS4 CHANGE TD MICK WALLACE HAS CLAIMED THAT A FORMER ‘BIG PLAYER’ IN NAMA USED INSIDER KNOWLEDGE TO PURCHASE THE SITE OF THE HARCOURT STREET GARDA CONTROL CENTRE.

A former “big player” in Nama used insider knowledge to purchase the site of the Harcourt Street Garda premises, Independents 4 Change TD Mick Wallacehas claimed.

Mr Wallace called on Taoiseach Enda Kenny to explain why the State allowed Nama to sell the location of the Garda “command and control centre” for the entire country to a vulture fund.

Hibernia Reit later said the claims about it were “ill-informed, inaccurate and without foundation”.

Hibernia Reit is now taking a court action to have An Garda Síochána removed from the Harcourt Street premises, Mr Wallace told the Dáil.

“The company that now owns Hibernia Reit was set up by a guy who was a big player in Nama where he was a portfolio manager for three years,” the Wexford TD said.

Asking why Nama was allowed to sell the site to a vulture fund, rather than keep it in State ownership, Mr Wallace said: “Had it anything to do with the fact that the people to benefit from it were insiders?”

Mr Kenny told him “the advice given to me by the authorities is that loan portfolio was sold following an open process to the highest bidder”.

“I’ll find out the answer for you why Harcourt station was sold to a vulture fund,” Kenny said.

An objection lodged?

The Taoiseach said an objection had been lodged to the Hibernia Reit court action. He also said that if there was an allegation being made about an individual or entity the Comptroller & Auditor General was “perfectly entitled to investigate that completely independently”.

Mr Kenny said “there are a lot of rumours going around, a lot of speculation, a lot of allegations”.

He said that if Mr Wallace had any evidence “this will be treated seriously as it was in other areas where commissions of investigations have been involved”.

Speaking about the buyer, Mr Wallace said that “when he joined Nama he moved his 30 per cent shareholding in his father’s company to an offshore trust. Did he declare that to Nama?”

The same company “then benefited from some very lucrative work from Nama”.

‘Inside knowledge use’

Mr Wallace said the portfolio manager left Nama in December 2012 and “used his inside knowledge regarding Nama assets to line up investment funds that would provide the finance for this new company Hibernia Reit which he manages”.

Mr Wallace said “it wouldn’t require forensic knowledge to establish that Hibernia Reit did remarkably well in purchasing assets from Nama, many of which this gentleman was involved with”.

He said “the public interest would be best served if we examined the internal workings of Nama”.

“At this stage the majority of people believe Nama is rotten to the core,” he added.

Project Aspen

In a statement after Mr Wallace’s comments, Hibernia Reit said the claims about it were “ill-informed, inaccurate and without foundation”.

Hibernia REIT did not purchase Harcourt Square from Nama, the company said. Harcourt Square was sold by Nama to Starwood Capital in 2013, as part of a large portfolio of assets called Project Aspen. Hibernia acquired the property from Starwood Capital in February 2015.

“Hibernia REIT is an Irish listed and regulated public company that is investing in Ireland for the long term,” the statement said. “It is disappointing that Deputy Wallace has used the protection of Dail privilege to make a range of untrue allegations.”

Financial strain, overcrowded housing and deprivation and young people have it tougher nowadays, says the ESRI

RESEARCH FINDS OVER-65S HAVE FEWER QUALITY-OF-LIFE PROBLEMS THAN YOUNGER ADULTS

     

FINANCIAL STRAIN, OVERCROWDED HOUSING AND DEPRIVATION WERE AMONG THE MOST SERIOUS PROBLEMS FOR YOUNG ADULTS, ACCORDING TO ESRI RESEARCH.

Younger people are having a tougher time of it in modern Ireland than the over-65s, new research has suggested.

Far more of those aged 18-30 have multiple quality-of-life problems than people over 65, the research from the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) has found.

Financial strain, overcrowded housing and deprivation were among the most serious problems for young adults, while poor health and feeling unsafe were among the worrying issues for older people.

Differences between social classes were also identified, with poorer adults significantly more likely to have “multiple problems” than wealthier people. Their problems include poverty, financial stress and housing quality and health.

THE RECESSION?

The findings pointed to the harsher impact the recession had on young people and on lower socioeconomic groups, said its author Dorothy Watson.

Published today by the Department of Social Protection, the research goes beyond income to measure Irish adults’ quality of life. It used 11 indicators to examine not only economic wellbeing, but also physical and mental health.

Drawing on 2013 survey data from the Central Statistics Office, the indicators used were income poverty, inability to afford basic goods and services, financial strain, poor health, mental distress, housing quality problems, neighbourhood problems, crowded accommodation, mistrust in institutions, lack of social support, and feeling unsafe in one’s local area. The findings apply to adults over 18.

Just over 70% of all adults had experienced at least one of the issues, while 25.5% had faced three or more of them.

The ESRI found that while 31% of those aged 18-30 faced problems in relation to three or more of the issues, only 20% of those aged 65-70 and those aged 71-85 reported a similar level of problems.

THE SOCIAL CLASS IN IRELAND?

In relation to social class, it found 36% of those in the manual skilled and semi-skilled sector experienced multiple problems compared with 14 per cent in the professional-managerial sector.

Ms Watson said the findings were consistent with those of other studies, with evidence of younger adults contending with multiple social stressors less likely to impact on older people. These included the cost and availability of housing, childcare costs and increased precariousness of work.

In contrast, successive budgets had protected pensions.

She said better public services in other societies helped to mitigate some of these stressors, particularly on the poor and younger adults.

This teacher’s letter praising a pupil with autism is the nicest thing you’ll read today

Ruth Clarkson decided to pen a letter praising the student for qualities not examined in academic tests

   

THE MOTHER OF 11-YEAR-OLD BOY BEN TWIST, WHO HAS AUTISM, HAS SHARED A HEART-WARMING LETTER HIS TEACHER PENNED DETAILING ALL HIS QUALITIES THAT ACADEMIC TESTS COULD NOT MEASURE.

Ben’s teacher Ruth Clarkson decided to write the uplifting letter after he failed his stats which he sat earlier in the year.

Gail, Ben’s mother, posted the letter on Twitter and it has already been retweeted 3,500 times.

In tears. A letter to my 11 yr old autistic son from his school. “These tests only measure a little bit of you”

The letter reads: “A very important piece of information I want you to understand is that these tests only measure a little bit of you and your abilities. They are important and you have done so well but Ben Twist is made up of many other skills and talents that we at Lansbury Bridge see and measure in other ways.”

She then lists some of his qualities including his kindness, abilities in sport and artistic talents.

She continues: “We are so pleased that all of these different talents and abilities make you the special person you are and these are all of the things we measure to reassure us that you are always making progress and continuing to develop as a lovely bright young man. Well done Ben, we are very proud of you.”

Ben’s emotional mum told the Liverpool Echo: “Ben worked so hard and sitting the tests was a massive achievement. We knew the results were coming but to get a letter like that – I got part-way through it and I burst into tears.”

“He is all of the things they wrote about him – he is an amazing person. I think their words will stay with him if we keep reminding him what they said about him. When I told him he said: ‘Wow, do they really think all those things about me?’ It’s just a beautiful thing to do.”

New Benthic Underwater microscope lets scientists watch corals as they boogie on down

      

USING THE NEWLY RELEASED BENTHIC UNDERWATER MICROSCOPE, SCIENTISTS OBSERVED CORAL POLYPS OFF THE COASTS OF ISRAEL AND MAUI EATING, DANCING, AND EVEN KISSING.

New underwater microscope technology allows scientists to get an up-close and personal look at the secret lives of dancing coral, according to a study published in the July 12 issue of the journal Nature Communications.

Scientists say that the new microscope, called the Benthic Underwater Microscope (BUM), allows them to explore the underwater world in an unprecedented way. The microscope features an extremely high-resolution camera, an underwater computer with a diver interface, bright LED lights for fast exposure images, and a flexible, tunable lens that allows scientists to view underwater structures in 3D.

“To understand the evolution of the dynamic processes taking place in the ocean,” said study lead author Jules Jaffe in a statement, “we need to observe them at the appropriate scale.”

First on the list of underwater life forms to observe using the new microscope? Coral. The magnificent invertebrates may look stationary, but they are built by tiny creatures called polyps, which look similar to upside down jellyfish attached to the bottom sides of coral reefs.

Millions of polyps work together to build coral reefs by secreting calcium carbonate, with the tiny animals providing nutrients and color to the reef.

The new microscope allowed a team of scientists to observe the tiny polyps as they gently swayed, ate, and, apparently, danced.

Using the microscope, scientists were able to position themselves two inches away from the polyps and watch them as they captured tiny plankton and brine shrimp with tiny swaying tentacles.

Scientists left the microscopes out overnight in order to observe the polyps over an extended period. The images and footage gathered show the polyps’ gentle “dancing” and post-meal kisses that scientists say could be a way for polyps to share nutrients throughout the coral colony.

Images from the Benthic Underwater Microscope also revealed a more violent side to the secret lives of polyps, showing coral of different species conquering weaker specimens. In order to win more reef space, the conquering coral will emit filaments that secrete stomach enzymes to destroy the tissue of their competitors.

Researchers have used the BUM in two places thus far – the waters off of Maui and the coast of Israel. With some of the largest coral bleaching events ever recorded taking place this year, scientists were especially interested to study the hard hit coral reefs off of Maui.

With the help of their new microscopic tool, scientists discovered that in bleached areas, there is a honeycomb pattern of algal colonization (like underwater squatters, algae move in when coral is weak from bleaching) and algal growth around individual polyps on the coral.

When coral are weak, scientists found, algae are able to outgrow and smother the already struggling reefs.

Scientists are enthusiastic about the future of underwater exploration with this new microscope, which they say is a great leap forward in the tools available for seafloor study.

“This underwater microscope is the first instrument to image the seafloor at such small scales,” said Dr. Jaffe’s co-lead author Andrew Mullen of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

“This instrument is a part of a new trend in ocean research to bring the lab to the ocean, instead of bringing the ocean to the lab,” said fellow lead author Tali Treibitz of the University of Haifa.

Next up for the microscope: close-up study of coral surfaces and tiny particles in the water around them in an effort to understand how coral breathe through gas exchange.