[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

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No Rocks, No Water, No Ecosystem (EAS)
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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
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