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A new star

December 11, 2008

New skeleton made by an eight-day old baby “golfball coral” reared in an experimental aquarium at the Bermuda Institute for Ocean Sciences forms a star-shape. 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—a result of rising levels of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere—on the health of new coral recruits. Cohen and McCorkle The young coral’s individual skeleton, or corallite, is about 1.5mm (0.06 inch) diameter. (Photo by Anne Cohen, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)