[Coral-List] Artificial Reefs
Eugene Shinn
eugeneshinn at mail.usf.edu
Tue Oct 29 11:04:58 EDT 2013
John, That is a well reasoned response to my questions, thank you and
congratulations. I especially appreciate your comment about Pleistocene
coral reefs. I continually rant about how little growth there is on the
so-called Florida reef tract that has had 6,000 years to grow and have
often suggested it be called a hard bottom coral community rather than a
reef. In this case the hard bottom is slowly forming on a thick
Pleistocene age coral reef so geologically speaking it could all be
lumped together and called a coral reef. It is a coral reef which
contains an 80 to 110 thousand year old hiatus between a Pleistocene
coral reef tract that was exposed and populated by air breathing plants
and animals when sea level dropped a few hundred feet below present.
The mystery is how did this thick coral reefs develop during the
Pleistocene in a location where where corals have been doing poorly for
the past 6,000 years? I can only guess that it was warmer during the
Pleistocene interglacial period. Gene
--
No Rocks, No Water, No Ecosystem (EAS)
------------------------------------ -----------------------------------
E. A. Shinn, Courtesy Professor
University of South Florida
College of Marine Science Room 221A
140 Seventh Avenue South
St. Petersburg, FL 33701
<eugeneshinn at mail.usf.edu>
Tel 727 553-1158
---------------------------------- -----------------------------------
More information about the Coral-List
mailing list