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Reef Ray

November 4, 2014

A manta ray glides over a coral reef on Jarvis Island in the Central Equatorial Pacific. A team including MIT-WHOI Joint Program students Liz Drenkard and Alice Alpert, from WHOI scientist Anne Cohen’s lab, and scientist emeritus Pat Lohmann went on a National Science Foundation-funded expedition to this remote island to collect coral cores and tissue samples and to deploy temperature loggers. Their goal is to study whether cool upwelling waters of the Equatorial Undercurrent provide a refuge from ocean temperatures expected to rise nearly 3˚C here by 2100. Measures of coral health and growth rates will help fill the picture of whether increasing EUC velocity is impacting reef health.(Photo by Pat Lohmann, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)