lagoon-channels

Updated: June 17, 2025

These consist in the inclined ledge terminated by a wall, and sometimes succeeded by a second ledge with a wall, round the shores of certain lagoons and lagoon-channels; a structure which cannot, as I endeavoured to show, be explained by the simple growing powers of the corals, in the ring or basin-like forms of the central reefs, as well as of the separate marginal portions of the northern Maldiva atolls, in the submerged condition of the whole, or of parts of certain barrier and atoll-formed reefs; where only a part is submerged, this being generally to leeward, in the apparent progressive disseverment of some of the Maldiva atolls, in the existence of irregularly formed atolls, some being tied together by linear reefs, and others with spurs projecting from them, and, lastly, in the structure and origin of the Great Chagos Bank.

Charles Darwin - Coral Reefs