Working with the Mark Grasmueck, Gregor Eberli, and John Reed we are retrieving corals from the Straits of FLorida and analyzing these for their stable C and O isotopic composition. Small anomalies on seismic lines led us to discover deep-reefs located throughout the Staits of Florida. These have been samples using submersibles and we are using these to study modern oceanographic processes as well as analogues for ancient corals.

The timing of the origin of symbiosis in corals has long been a mystery. Some have suggested that the emergence of corals as the dominant framebuilding component of reefs during the Triassic coincided with the development of the associations of zooxanthellae and corals. We are using modern corals as models for the ancient and ancient corals as models for the modern in order to understand the processes of calcification.