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Next stop: searching for more fossil reefs on the north shore of Lake Enriquillo
Las Clavelinas morning_downsized

Erin and Félix scope out today’s coral reef sampling site

On the North side of Lake Enriquillo there’s a site called Las Clavelinas (or Las Clavellinas, depending on the literature). The problem is finding its exact location….

Exploring a colossal coral cave

The fossil coral reef at Cañada Honda, on the north coast of Lake Enriquillo, is one of the best studied in the region.

This incredible site shows a near-perfect section of a coral reef, starting with 10-meter thickets of Acropora cervicornis at the top of the section, where the reef crest would have been. This is a coral that today is threatened with extinction. Yet we know from high-resolution carbon dating  by Lisa Greer and colleagues, that here this coral grew uninterrupted for more than 1,000 years.

Just like diving over a reef crest onto the fore-reef, walking down the storm canyon we found ourselves into deeper parts of the reef core, first dominated by Orbicella colonies of many different forms and almost all in life position and finally many huge colonies of Siderastrea.

Coral reefs are complex ecosystems, composed of many species of fish, sponge and corals and molluscs, and sites like Cañada Honda give allow us to capture this complexity in reefs before human impact.

Coral and cacti: collecting fossils in Owl Canyon
Félix takes photographs beside a fossil reef.
A fossilized star coral in Owl Canyon.
Mauro puts fine samples into a small bags for ear bones, sponge spicules or other microfossils.
Erin and Félix carry off heavy bags of samples for analysis.

It took a few wrong turns but we made the trip to the Cañon del Buho (Owl Canyon), on the shores of the Dominican Republic’s Lake Enriquillo.

Stay tuned for more updates and videos. Here are some photos from the field trip.

 

What do shark scales say about their owners?

In this shark tale for Save our Seas Foundation, Erin Dillon explains the characteristics of some of the shark scales found on four well-known shark species. Erin is pioneering a new technique that uses these scales, known as dermal denticles, found in modern reefs and the fossil record to study changes in shark abundance and community composition over time.

Cañon de Buho jpegs (8 of 9)

Erin carries a bulk bag of a fossil reef sediment from Cañon del Buho in the Dominican Republic on March 17, 2016. The ten-kilogram bag may hold some 25 tiny shark scales known as dermal denticles.

 

A quick sundown stop at a huge fossil reef
First stop before Jimani (1 of 3)

Erin, Félix, Aaron and Mauro take a quick look at fossil reefs excavated along the road around Lake Enriquillo

We reached the banks of Lake Enriquillo just before nightfall. A new road has been cut through the Holocene fossil reef — to circumvent the steadily rising hypersaline lake, which is 40 meters below sea level — and the spoil of fossils line the road for kilometers.  Acropora cervicornis (staghorn coral) is the dominant species found here, along with a variety of other coral species, snails and clams. Nightfall and a brief rain kept the exploratory visit short. The serious sampling begins tomorrow…

First stop before Jimani (2 of 3)

Erin and Mauro and fossil corals aplenty.