Coral Clockworks

Corals put down growth layers, similar to tree rings, that record the environmental conditions they grew in. Using core samples, scientists can learn about current health conditions on a reef as well as the climate history recorded in their skeletons. Working in the lab of her WHOI advisor, paleoclimatologist Konrad Hughen, Summer Student Fellow Hazel Fargher of Worcester Polytechnic Institute sub-sampled coral cores collected on an expedition to Cuba in February 2015. The cores, which were from the species Siderastrea sidereal and were 220 “years long,” will help researchers assemble climate records for an area that is influenced by things like El Niño and the North Atlantic Oscillation.(Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)