Blog Post Image: Coral Reefs in Palau Surprisingly Resistant to Naturally Acidified Waters

Chemical oceanographer Katie Shamberger, shown here with an instrument in co-author Dan McCorkle’s lab that measures seawater CO2 parameters, led the water sampling effort in Palau in the western Pacific. There, the scientists studied nine sites along a transect that stretched from the open ocean, across the barrier reef, into the lagoon and then into the bays and inlets around the Rock Islands of Palau. “When we first plotted up those data, we were shocked” that the water in the Rock Islands was at levels of acidification that are expected for the open ocean in the tropical western Pacific by the end of the century. (Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

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