Cold-water corals Trachythela sp. YZ-2020 are important habitats for creatures in the deep-sea environment, but they have been degraded by anthropogenic activity. They live in the cold, dark, and hypoxic deep-sea waters and are widespread around the world. Most of them must attach to hard-bottom substrates to grow, and only a few can live on soft sediments. Due to the lack of symbiotic zooxanthellae, they do not require sunlight as a source of energy, and their major source of nutrients is the microscopic zooplankton that comes from passing currents or descends from the surface of the ocean.