Coral biology

Aragonite. Calcium carbonate is a common deposit in shallow tropical waters as a constituent of muds, or in the upper part of coral reefs where it precipitates from carbon dioxide-rich waters supersaturated with carbonate from intense biological photosynthesis and solar heating. Deposits of ooHtic aragonite, CaCO, extending over 250,000 km in water less than 5 m deep ate mined for industrial purposes in the Bahamas for export to the United States (19). 

A major biological sink for CO9 that is often overlooked is the calcium carbonate shells of corals, molluscs, and Crustacea. These invertebrate animals deposit CaCOa in the form of protective exoskeletons. In some invertebrates, such as the sderaetinians (hard corals) of tropical seas, photosynthetic dinoflagellates (kingdom Protoctista) known as zooxanthellae live within the ani-... 

Investigations of the natural products chemistry of the Red Sea soft coral Lobophyton depressum (Alcyonacea) led to the isolation of a crystalline prostanoid derivative [70]. On the basis of H NMR data, the planar structure was developed as methyl ll-acetoxy-PGF2tt (56). Stereochemistry at Cl5 was established as S by comparison of the biological and NMR features of the hydrolyzed... 

Thus, with a variable degree of empiricity, mass transfer coefficients for a number of biologically relevant cases have been described phytoplankton uptake [60], periphyton uptake [61], coral-reef supply of nutrients [62-64], fixation of carbon at leaf surfaces [65], etc. 

Banner, A. H. In "Biology and Geology of Coral Reefs" Jones,... 

IT Corporation performed laboratory-scale testing of the use of micronutrients from yeast extract to encourage biological polishing after thermally enhanced fluid injection with vacuum extraction (FIVE) for coral sand contaminated with petroleum hydrocarbons. The commercial availability of this technology is unknown. 

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