I was creating a custom data pack with a custom loot table for dead coral items, like the fans and plant variants, and noticed that the loot table only drops when using a Silk Touch Pickaxe. Even when the loot table was changed to drop an item regardless of the conditions, it would still only work when a Silk Touch Pickaxe was used. It is almost as if there is a precondition to even running the loot table that must be met, which is having a pickaxe with silk touch. No matter what I typed in the loot table, it wouldn't drop anything until I used Silk Touch. I gave up on the loot table, and then tried using a scoreboard, but it seems as though the score for mining dead coral fans and the shrubs only counts when breaking it with a Silk Touch Pickaxe. I really need to be able to test for when a player breaks one of these blocks, but all the current methods require the player to be holding a Silk Touch Pickaxe.

I've noticed that the loot table for these dead coral items include the Silk Touch requirement, however removing this condition doesn't change the fact that they still require Silk Touch for the loot table to even run.

Not sure if this also applies to the living variants of these items, but it definitely does to the dead ones.