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Christmas Coral

New skeleton made by a two-week old baby Porites “porous” coral reared in an experimental aquarium at the Bermuda Institute for Ocean Sciences looks like a miniature Christmas tree. The young coral’s individual skeleton is about 1.5mm (0.06 inch) diameter. WHOI Research Associate Kathryn Rose meticulously removes the corallite for morphometric and chemical analyses, to understand the effects of sea water saturation state on coral growth. The ongoing experiment is part of a collaborative study by WHOI scientists Anne Cohen and Dan McCorkle, and BIOS scientist Sam du Putron to assess the effects of ocean acidification as a result of rising levels of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere on the health of new coral recruits.
(Photo by Kathryn Rose, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)