SCPs in corals
Due to their high growth rates, corals have been widely used as a natural archive to record temporal changes in ocean chemistry (e.g., salinity, pH) and contaminants (metals, organic pollutants) as well geochemical proxies for temperature. Like many other archives they also show a record of radioisotopes as a result of nuclear weapons testing from the mid-20th century and recently SCPs have also been found to have become incorporated into coral skeletons for the first time.
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Photo credit: Diego Hersting.
Using a core collected from a colony of the coral Cladocera caespitosa collected from near the Columbretes Islands in the Mediterranean Sea, SCPs were identified in coral samples dated to between 1957 and 1992 CE, while the surface chemistry of the SCPs indicated they were likely derived from coal burning. Although only present in very low concentrations, the presence of SCPs in corals adds another archive to the list where SCPs have been found including lake and marine sediments, peats and ice cores. More details may be found in the paper (see below).
Roberts, L.R., Kersting, D.K., Zinke, J. and Rose, N.L., 2024. First recorded presence of anthropogenic fly-ash particles in coral skeletons. Science of The Total Environment, p.170665.