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Landscape of history

November 22, 2008

Dense meter-high thickets of staghorn coral surround massive, rounded, ancient coral colonies in the background. WHOI scientist Konrad Hughen photographed this undersea landscape just 15 feet down while surveying corals on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, as a guide to potential future sampling. Hughen, in the WHOI Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry Department, and the Paleoceanography group, studies tropical climate change over time, by analyzing the composition of ancient corals’ skeleton material.
(Photo by Konrad Hughen, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)