That something turned out to be dissolved organic carbon (DOC); essentially, sugars and carbohydrates in the water. When algae get too numerous on a reef they make huge amounts of DOC and create a banquet for coral microbes. These algal sugars would normally flow up the food chain to be locked away in the bodies of grazers and, ultimately, sharks; a single shark represents the stored energy of several tons of algae. But if all the sharks die, those sugars remain at the bottom of the food web where, instead of fuelling the flesh of fish, they build the cells of microbes. Nourished by this
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dissolved organic carbon (DOC)
