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Keeping It Clean

August 18, 2016

Bowdoin College Summer Student Fellow Ben Geyman (left) checks samples with WHOI marine biogeochemist Tristan Horner and WHOI researcher Maureen Wisch. Geyman and the others are working in what’s known as a “clean room” and wearing protective lab coats to keep dust from their clothes from contaminating their samples. They’ll analyze the samples—dissolved pieces of bamboo coral—for their barium content. Living corals incorporate trace amounts of barium and other metals into their calcium carbonate skeletons as they grow. The amount of barium in corals can tell scientists about biological productivity and ocean circulation, and how these may have changed in Earth’s past.(Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)