It was 1939, and Siro Kawaguti, a Japanese zoology lecturer at Taihoku Imperial University (now National Taiwan University), was curious about the thick, pinkish slicks he saw floating on the surface of the sea off the coast of Taiwan. So he took samples back to his lab for examination.
One year later, and 40 years before similar discoveries would be made in the West, Kawaguti began to publish his findings, which, being in Japanese, were largely ignored until recently, with the effects of climate change leading to new interest in his work.
The thick, pinkish slicks he found that day turned out to be coral larvae, 52 species of which he eventually identified off the northern coast, and 71 more in the south.