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Searching for Forams

Visiting graduate student Inge van Dijk looks for minuscule organisms known as foraminifera in sediments from a salt marsh near South Cape Beach on Cape Cod. She brought the tiny organisms back to WHOI, where they are part of a project to develop a non-invasive method for measuring pH changes within them as they produce their calcified shell. Scientists Weifu Guo, Frieder Klein, and Joan Bernhard hope the study will lead to a better understanding of foraminiferans’ calcification mechanism in relation to pH. Ocean acidification linked to climate change has been shown to adversely affect the formation of calcium carbonate structures by many marine organisms.(Photo by Jos Wit, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)