Corallium rubrum, the red coral (family Coralliidae, order Alcyonacea), is a highly valued precious coral endemic to the Mediterranean Sea and adjacent Atlantic waters, with its characteristic blood-red calcareous axis prized for jewelry and decorative objects for millennia—making it one of the most commercially exploited marine invertebrates. The species forms branching colonies at depths of 10–300 m and is extremely slow-growing at under 1 mm per year skeletal growth rate. It is assessed as Endangered by the IUCN due to centuries of overharvesting. Genomic data have been generated for this species and are available in public databases, enabling comparative studies of cnidarian evolution and ecology.