An animal, not a stone

First thing to set straight: red coral is neither a mineral nor a plant. It is an animal.

Corallium rubrum belongs to the cnidarians, the same large family as jellyfish and anemones. It is an octocoral, which means that each of its polyps has eight tentacles. These polyps are white, translucent, and tiny. They filter water and capture plankton.

What we call "coral," that hard red branch carved into jewelry, is only the skeleton of the colony. It is composed of calcite, tinted bright red by a pigment from the carotenoid family, canthaxanthin. The living flesh, meanwhile, covers this skeleton with a vermilion red crust crisscrossed by canals.

A ten-centimeter branch of red coral takes between fifteen and fifty years to grow. This is the figure that should accompany every piece of jewelry sold.

Growth is between two and eight millimeters per year. Colonies today measure five to twenty centimeters. In the past, one could encounter colonies reaching one meter. They have disappeared, victims of overexploitation.

Where it lives in Corsica

Red coral is a species essentially endemic to the Mediterranean. It exists almost nowhere else, and that is what gives it all its value.

It needs three things: clear, agitated water, an average temperature around fifteen degrees, and above all, darkness. It colonizes dark rocky walls, overhangs, cave entrances, and underwater cliffs.

It can be found as shallow as five meters deep, but it is mainly abundant beyond thirty meters, and present down to depths of four hundred meters. This depth distribution is not natural: the shallow colonies were harvested first, since antiquity. What remains on the surface was spared by chance.

In Corsica, historical areas are the Straits of Bonifacio, where violent currents and vertical drop-offs create ideal conditions, as well as the Gulf of Porto and the Scandola reserve, and certain sectors of the Cap Corse.

The blood of Medusa: the founding myth

Before being a material, red coral is a story. And this story comes to us from Ovid.

In the Metamorphoses, Perseus has just beheaded Medusa, the only mortal of the three Gorgons. He places the severed head on a bed of seaweed, at the water's edge, while he washes his hands. The seaweed, upon contact with the monster, hardens. The sea nymphs repeat the experiment, amused by the miracle, and sow the sea with these petrified stalks.

From there, says the myth, comes coral. And from there comes its color: the blood of the Gorgon.

The detail Ovid retains is strikingly accurate for a text from the first century: the stalk, flexible under water, hardens upon contact with air. This is exactly what coral divers observe when they bring their branches back up.

A manina: the cradle talisman

This is where red coral ceases to be a precious material to become an object of insular culture.

In Corsica, as in Sardinia and Sicily, coral protects against the evil eye, the ochju. The belief is ancient and shared throughout the Mediterranean basin: the evil spell strikes first and foremost those who are complimented, and the newborn child is the most exposed of all.

Hence the custom: one places a small hand of coral, a manina, or a raw branch, in the infant's cradle. Often even before baptism. The popular logic is clear: baptism protects the soul, the coral protects while waiting.

This practice goes far beyond the island. The historian Christine Bousquet, in Le Corail au Moyen Âge, notes that it can even be found in religious iconography itself. A Madonna of Humility painted at the end of the fourteenth century by Giovanni Badile shows the naked Christ Child, wearing as his only garment a coral amulet around his neck.

Coral therefore belongs to the same family of objects as the Eye of Saint Lucia: a material taken from the sea, transformed into protection, passed down from generation to generation without anyone ever needing to explain why.

The Magnificent Coral Company

Here is the episode that almost no one knows, and it is probably the most beautiful.

In the sixteenth century, coral was a material of very high value throughout the West and as far as the Orient. The most coveted waters were not Corsican: they were those of the North African coastline, around La Calle, today El Kala, and Bône, today Annaba. The chroniclers of the time describe it as the most beautiful coral in the world.

That is where a family from Morsiglia, in Cap Corse, enters the scene.

Tommaso Linciu, born around 1510, settled in Marseille in 1533 as a shipowner. He Frenchified his name to Lenche and married a townswoman. In 1550, he obtained the right to coral fishing in the waters of the Maghreb, through an agreement made with the Genoese and the Dey of Algiers.

Two years later, he established a stronghold between La Calle and Bône to house his fishermen, up to two hundred and fifty men at the height of activity. This place would become the Bastion of France.

Tommaso Lenche enters history as the first Christian to obtain such a monopoly on Muslim land. A fisherman from Cap Corse who became a Mediterranean coral tycoon.

According to the historian Michel Vergé-Franceschi

The name of his company says it all regarding his ambition: the Magnificent Coral Company. The adventure would last until the wars of religion, when his nephew Antoine was assassinated in 1588.

May 23, 1816, the massacre of the Ajaccian coral divers

Coral made Corsican fortunes. It also made widows.

In the spring of 1816, hundreds of European fishermen, including an Ajaccian community, were stationed in the port of Bône for the fishing season. They were there quite legally, provided with the British passes required at the time to navigate those waters.

In early May, relations between the Regency of Algiers and the British deteriorated sharply. The Dey of Algiers drew an expeditious conclusion: the Corsicans depended economically on the English, therefore the Corsicans were potential enemies. They had to be put in chains.

On May 23, 1816, Ascension Day, a Turkish guard appeared before the casemates of the Ajaccian coral divers. Surprised and knowing they were innocent, they resisted. Both sides were armed. The massacre was immediate: daggers, rifle butts, sabers, shots in the fray. Some tried to flee by sea, without success.

The toll was fourteen dead and dozens injured. The survivors were thrown into the city's dungeons, and it would take days of European negotiations to have them released.

Back in Ajaccio, the families learned that the French government was now banning coral fishing near the African shores. As the historian Santa Leonetti summarizes in Le Corail en Méditerranée, this event sounded the death knell for coral fishing in Ajaccio.

Two hundred and ten years later, this date appears on no plaque. It is one of the reasons why we are writing this article.

The Saint Andrew's cross, the bulldozer of the seabed

One must understand how the coral was harvested to understand why it almost disappeared.

For centuries, divers went down by free-diving. Then, from the eighteenth century until the end of the 1970s, another method took hold, which was incomparably more destructive.

The Saint Andrew's cross is an iron bar weighted with chains, to which about thirty meters of nets called "fauberts" were attached. Boats would drag it over bottoms of eighty to one hundred and fifty meters. The device would break the colonies, which would get tangled in the nets.

The yield of this process gives the measure of the disaster: only about thirty percent of the coral destroyed was collected. The remaining seventy percent was lost, torn off, and left on the bottom.

The damage did not stop at the coral itself. The cloud of silt raised by the device would settle on the surrounding rocks and stifle the entire ecosystem. What coral divers describe after the passage of a Saint Andrew's cross is a lunar landscape.

These devices were banned in 1980. They continued to be used illegally for about a dozen years, particularly on Corsican seabeds.

The profession of coral diver today

It is a highly technical profession, practiced by a handful of men.

In France, the harvesting of red coral is banned except by special permit. The national management regime is based on the decree of April 17, 2020, extended in May 2024. Fewer than thirty licenses existed in the entire territory in 2023.

For the whole of Corsica, the Directorate of Maritime Affairs granted only ten special permits.

Harvesting is now done with self-contained diving gear, which changes everything. Where the Saint Andrew's cross tore blindly, the coral diver gathers by hand, branch by branch.

• Dives sometimes go down to one hundred meters, in the Straits of Bonifacio, with famously violent currents.
• A coral diver harvests two hundred to three hundred kilos per year, in about two hundred dives.
• Only branches over seven millimeters in diameter are taken. The remaining colonies continue to reproduce.

This selective fishing is akin to gathering. It is the difference between a forester and a forest fire.

From branch to jewelry

Red coral is worked like a hard stone. This is what distinguishes it radically from the coral of warm seas, which is porous and does not allow for any sculpture.

The process is artisanal from start to finish.

• Cleaning. The branch is washed in a drum machine. The skin is removed, which is about twenty percent of the weight.
• Cutting. Segments are cut with a circular saw, under a constant stream of water. Coral is never worked dry.
• Shaping. Grinding, then freehand roughing, with the piece mounted on a pin stuck into a wooden handle.
• Tools. Drills, burrs, water saws, grinding wheels, polishers. These are essentially dentist's instruments.
• Polishing. Drum, then barrel. This is what gives the coral its shine.
• Sorting. By size, then by quality and color. Finally, stringing.

About half of the raw material goes into beads. The other half becomes pendants, earrings, sculptures, depending on what nature has given the branch.

In Bonifacio, a few workshops still perpetuate this work, from the dive to the display case. A historical detail to finish: it was Torre del Greco, a small town near Naples, that became the world capital of coral work at the end of the nineteenth century, shipping as far as the Indies.

How to distinguish real coral from an imitation

It must be said bluntly: a large portion of the red coral sold in stores is artificial, often made in China, and a lot of it is sold in tourist areas, including in Corsica.

Some points of reference before buying.

• Color. Real coral is never perfectly uniform. It presents nuances, veins, sometimes paler areas. A bright and perfectly homogeneous red should be a red flag.
• Price. Authentic coral is expensive, and it cannot be otherwise: ten centimeters of branch represent decades of growth and a dive to one hundred meters.
• Origin. Ask who harvested it and where. A serious seller will answer without hesitation, often with a name and a port.
• Reconstituted coral. Beware of this intermediate category: coral powder bonded with synthetic resins. This is not "fake" strictly speaking, but it is not a branch. And this technique encourages the collection of small, once-worthless branches, with a real risk of local eradication of colonies.

An endangered species

Corallium rubrum is classified as endangered on the IUCN Red List.

It is listed in Annex III of the Bern Convention and Annex V of the Habitats Directive of the European Union. Annual quotas, fishing seasons, and prohibited areas regulate its harvest.

An order of magnitude to measure the distance traveled: in the 1980s, the Mediterranean harvest was estimated at about seventy tons per year, of which five to six tons were for the French coast alone.

The main problem today is no longer legal, regulated, and minority fishing. It is poaching, fueled by black market prices, and it remains very present in Corsica. Each colony ripped out outside of the quota represents decades of lost growth, in an ecosystem that does not reconstitute itself on the scale of a human life.

Where to see it without touching

The good news is that you can admire it without harvesting anything.

• Scuba diving. The drop-offs and semi-dark caves of the Straits of Bonifacio and the Scandola reserve shelter the most beautiful accessible colonies. Our guide to diving in Corsica details the sites.
• In sea caves. Some can be explored by boat or snorkeling, and the coral sometimes descends high enough to be visible without tanks.
• At the workshops of Bonifacio's coral divers. Some workshops open their display cases and are happy to talk about their craft. It is the best way to understand what you are looking at.

An absolute rule, and it is not at all symbolic: you do not harvest anything. Detaching a branch is illegal without a license, and that branch took twenty years to grow.

What coral teaches us

We design clothing, not jewelry. But there is something in the history of red coral that speaks to us directly.

It is a material that Corsica did not invent, but received from the sea, and from which it created a trade, a craft, and a symbol all at once. The same object protects a newborn in a cradle in Cap Corse and has made the fortune of a shipowner in Marseille. It is simultaneously sacred and commercial, and no one on the island has ever found that contradictory.

And then there is the question of time. Eight millimeters a year. A branch that takes twenty years to be worth cutting. In a world that produces a collection every six weeks, that is a useful reminder.

That is the logic we try to maintain with our pieces: few references, a material chosen for what it does, and garments that should be more beautiful in three years than at the time of purchase. We explain this in our guide on how to recognize a true Corsican brand.

Red coral, for its part, did not need to be told. It has always grown at its own pace, and it is we who are going too fast.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is red coral an animal or a stone?

It is an animal. Corallium rubrum is a cnidarian of the Coralliidae family, related to jellyfish and anemones. The red branch that is cut into jewelry is its calcareous skeleton, colored by a pigment called canthaxanthin.

Why is red coral called "red gold"?

Because of its market value, comparable to that of a precious stone, and its rarity. It is essentially endemic to the Mediterranean, it grows by two to eight millimeters per year, and its harvest is strictly regulated today.

Can you pick red coral in Corsica?

No. Harvesting is prohibited except by exemption issued by the Directorate of Maritime Affairs. For all of Corsica, only ten exemptions have been granted. Removing a branch without a license is illegal.

At what depth is red coral found?

From five to four hundred meters, but it is most abundant beyond thirty meters. Shallow colonies were the first to be harvested since Antiquity, which explains this distribution. In the Strait of Bonifacio, coral divers sometimes go down to one hundred meters.

What does red coral mean in Corsican tradition?

It protects against the evil eye, the ochju. Custom dictates that a small hand of coral, a manina, or a raw branch be placed in a newborn's cradle, often even before the baptism. Coral is also associated with vitality and good fortune.

Where does the legend of coral born from Medusa's blood come from?

From Ovid, in the Metamorphoses. Perseus beheads Medusa and places her head on a bed of seaweed, which hardens upon contact with the monster. The sea nymphs repeat the experiment and sow the sea with these petrified stalks. Ovid notes that the stalk, supple under water, hardens in the air: an accurate observation.

How can you tell if coral is authentic?

Look at the color: real coral is never perfectly uniform; it has shades and veins. Beware of a low price, which is incompatible with decades of growth and deep-sea diving. And ask for the origin: a serious seller will give you a name and a port. A large portion of the coral sold in tourist areas is artificial.

Is red coral endangered?

Yes. It is classified as endangered on the IUCN Red List, listed in Annex III of the Bern Convention and in Annex V of the European Habitats Directive. The main threat today is poaching, which is still very present in Corsica.

What is the Saint Andrew's cross?

A fishing device dragged along the seabed, consisting of an iron bar weighted with chains and about thirty meters of nets. Used from the eighteenth century until the 1970s, it broke colonies and harvested only about thirty percent of them. Banned in 1980, it continued to be used illegally for a dozen years.

Where can you see red coral in Corsica?

While diving, on the drop-offs and in the semi-dark caves of the Strait of Bonifacio and the Scandola reserve. Some sea caves also allow it to be seen without a tank. And at the workshops of the coral divers in Bonifacio, who exhibit their work.

To learn more

• The Eye of Saint Lucia, the other Corsican marine talisman
• Diving in Corsica: the greatest underwater paradise in the Mediterranean
• Bonifacio: the complete guide
• Gulf of Porto, Girolata and Scandola
• Cap Corse: the complete guide
• The 10 most beautiful Genoese towers in Corsica
• Jellyfish in Corsica
• The Moor's Head: history and symbolism

To discover our Mediterranean wardrobe, browse the complete collection.

It grows by eight millimeters per year, in the dark, at a depth of one hundred meters. It has outlived the Romans, the Genoese, the Lenches, and the trawlers. If anything deserves to be called heritage, it is definitely this.

A DOPU,
TAFA

By passing through Corsica, the customer becomes a friend.

Sources: Wikipedia, Red coral. DORIS, FFESSM, Corallium rubrum entry. Ange Pozzo di Borgo, From the Magnificent Coral Company to the massacre of the Ajaccio coral divers, based on Michel Vergé-Franceschi and Santa Leonetti. La Boutique du Corailleur, Bonifacio, trade pages. Christine Bousquet, Coral in the Middle Ages. Ovid, Metamorphoses. Article compiled in September 2026.