Coral
Macroscopic Life
They look like space stations, but actually are colonial forms of single-celled organisms called radiolarians, collected in the deep Celebes…
Read MoreNew Study Finds Distinct Microbes Living Next to Corals
WHOI scientists distinct discover microbes living just a few centimeters from the surface of corals near the southern coast of Cuba. The discovery may yield clues about the ecological functions of microbes, and how they find and infect coral colonies.
Read MoreVirgin Island Corals in Crisis
A coral disease outbreak that wiped out nearly 80% of stony corals between Florida’s Key Biscayne and Key West during the past two years appears to have spread to the U.S. Virgin Islands (U.S.V.I.), where reefs that were once vibrant and teeming with life are now left skeleton white in the disease’s wake.
Read MoreSuper Reefs: The Future of Coral – Watch on Facebook Live
New Deep-Sea Coral Species Discovered
New Species of ‘Bubblegum Coral’ Discovered at Imperiled Undersea Monument
Dating Corals, Knowing the Ocean
Coral is a useful tool for scientists who want to understand changes in past climate, but recalling that history presents…
Read MoreCoral
Many people think of coral as hard, rock-like formations that attract abundant, diverse marine life. In fact, corals are themselves…
Read MoreDeep-sea Corals
When most people think of corals, they think od the big interconnected structures such as the Great Barrier Reef off Australia. But deep in the ocean much smaller coral formations lie past the point where light penetrates.
Read MoreA DISCO in the Ocean
To investigate coral bleaching, WHOI scientists figure out a novel way to take direct measurements in the ocean of superoxide, a key molecule that vanishes almost as soon as it is made.
Read MoreCoral Larvae Use Sound to Find a Home on the Reef
Choosing a place to call home is one of the most consequential choices a coral can make. In the animal’s larval stage, it floats freely in the ocean, but once it settles down, it anchors itself permanently to the rocky substrate of a reef, and remains stuck there for the rest of its life. Exactly how these larvae choose a specific place to live, however, is largely unclear.
Read MoreHow Do Corals Build Their Skeletons?
WHOI scientists discovered precisely how ocean acidification affects coral skeletons’ a factor that will help scientists predict how corals throughout the world will fare as the oceans become more acidic.
Read MoreStudy Tracks Severe Bleaching Events on a Pacific Coral Reef Over Past Century
As climate change causes ocean temperatures to rise, coral reefs worldwide are experiencing mass bleaching events and die-offs. For many, this is their first encounter with extreme heat. However for some reefs in the central Pacific, heatwaves caused by El Nino are a way of life. Exactly how these reefs deal with repeated episodes of extreme heat has been unclear. A new study from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), has uncovered the history of bleaching on a reef in the epicenter of El Nino, revealing how some corals have been able to return after facing extreme conditions. The study was published October 26, 2018, in the journal Communications Biology.
Read MoreFirst Time Out
Postdoctoral investigator Eyal Wurgaft, research assistant Kate Morkeski, and MIT-WHOI Joint Program graduate student Mallory Ringham (left to right) lower…
Read MoreSounds of the Reef
Engineer Rod Catanach sets up a four-channel acoustic recorder to measure coral reef soundscapes—a combination of biological and non-biological sounds…
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