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A Hermit Crab walking on a coral beach.

A Hermit Crab walking on a coral beach.
A Hermit Crab walking on a coral beach.
A Hermit Crab walking on a coral beach.
A Hermit Crab walking on a coral beach.
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413572
Hughen, Konrad
A Hermit Crab walking on a coral beach.
Still Image
03/12/2015
graphics/hughen/Hermit_crab.jpg
Image Of the Day caption:
WHOI paleoclimatologist Konrad Hughen snapped this photo of a hermit crab during a 2015 expedition to the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean. Hughen studies climate change by looking at corals. The tiny coral animals called polyps live in the surface layer of a hard calcium carbonate skeleton. Every year, the polyps extract chemicals from the water and use them to build another layer of skeletonjust as a tree produces annual growth rings. By using a hollow drill to extract cores from corals and analyzing their chemical make-up, Hughen can estimate how the temperature of the water has changed over the past several centuries.
Photo by Konrad Hughen
© Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
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