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CT Scans Reveal Coral’s Secrets

WHOI researchers Neal E. Cantin and Anne L. Cohen examine a Red Sea coral specimen just outside  a CT scanner tube. Their pioneering use of CT scanning revealed that these corals, Diploastrea heliopora, have been under chronic stress from above average  sea-surface temperatures for the last decade. Growth of the coral has declined by 30 percent over that time and could cease altogether by 2070 or sooner, the WHOI researchers reported in the July 16 issue of the journal Science. The other WHOI scientists who participated in the study are climate dynamicist Kristopher B. Karnauskas, coral biologist Ann M. Tarrant and chemical oceanographer Daniel C. McCorkle.(Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)