Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Wednesday Picture of the Day

Since this whole meme was sponsored by Evelyn Mervine, and she posted a photo of coral today, I was inspired to post a photo of modern carbonates. This one is from the Great Barrier Reef. If I was a carbonate sedimentologist, I would probably spend more time than necessary studying modern analogs.

2 comments:

  1. LOVE IT! The Pacific has such a diversity of corals. Many species live on in the pacific that died off in the Atlantic and the end of the Pliocene (due to the closing of the Isthmus of Panama). Better at my Caribbean coral ID but there looks to be some Acropora Cerviconis (top left next to this lettuce variety). Suspect you were in deeper water off the front of the barrier?

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  2. I went to two different reefs on my daytrip--I know which four the dive company uses, but I don't know which ones we went to. It was deeper water for sure, and somewhere on the outer reef.

    This was my second time snorkeling in the Pacific. The other was in Fiji, off a beach. I've also snorkeled in Belize. Barrier reefs definitely have more varieties of coral than fringing reefs.

    I'm hopeless at coral ID, but I looked through some of my other photos (which I'll post here eventually) and there definitely was some Acropora Cerviconis in the area, so that probably is what is in the corner of this photo.

    Sadly, in some spots the coral was really damaged--either by ocean acidification or Cyclone Yasi.

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