December 16, 2019 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
Dave Veilleux and Sean Grace lean over trays lined with thumb-sized coral colonies, varying in color from white to brown to a mix of white and brown. An instrument called a fluorometer beeps, and they move on to measure photosynthesis in the next colony. In the background, you can hear the constant flow of seawater from Long Island Sound, and the whir of the carbon dioxide system hard at work.
Grace chairs the Biology Department at Southern Connecticut State University, and Veilleux runs the shellfish hatchery at NOAA Fisheries’ Milford Laboratory. The two have known each other for 15 years, since Veilleux was Grace’s first graduate student. They’ve teamed up again to study the effects of ocean acidification on New England’s only hard coral species, the appropriately named Astrangia poculata, or northern star coral.
Northern star coral is considered a model for investigating coral response to environmental change. Researchers want to pinpoint what makes this hardy coral uniquely able to thrive in harsh conditions. This may provide ideas on how to help boost the resilience of more delicate tropical coral species. The Milford Lab has two state-of-the-art ocean acidification experimental systems built for carbon dioxide exposure studies, making it an ideal setting for this research.