They appear to be a colony of spionid worms. They won't eat the coral but their feeding tentacles will irritate it. Scraping off the tubes with a razor and rinsing the coral afterwards in a bowl of tank water will often remove them. A small dab of gel superglue on the tip of each tube will also kill them. Certain varieties bore into the coral skeleton so scraping won't work. That's where the glue will help. You could also re-frag the coral by cutting off a large section of that dead base and remounting it. That would remove a large portion of them right there. Glue the rest.