Deep-sea corals have some things in common with trees.
Deep-sea corals have some things in common with trees. As their branches grow, corals document the minute details of ocean chemistry in ring patterns like those in tree trunks. And like certain trees, some coral species can live for hundreds or even thousands of years, preserving their recording of past conditions. Dr. Nancy Foster Scholar Carina Fish uncovers the records kept by deep-sea corals in Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary for her Ph.D. at University of California, Davis.
While some oceanographers use sensors to understand the present-day ocean, Fish is also part paleooceanographer, using deep-sea coral skeletons to piece together information about past environmental conditions in Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary. Coral skeletons hold useful information about marine food webs and water chemistry. Uncovering the conditions corals were exposed to in the past can provide Fish insight into what deep-sea environments and their overlying surface water have experienced before.
When Fish started her undergraduate career at Harvard University, she didn’t have the opportunity to study marine sciences. She did what she thought was the next best thing: geology. After earning her undergraduate degree and with a preview of geochemistry, she spent two years working at Columbia University in her first paleoceanography job. There, she examined sediment from the seafloor, specifically small plankton shells.
“[Columbia University] gave me a great appreciation for the geological past, and how you can reconstruct past environment conditions from tiny shells in the ocean,” Fish says. “That really stuck with me.”
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Image via NOAA.
