image003Dr. Richard Mortlock was awarded $38,188 from the USGS, St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center, for the “ Reconstruction of Tropical Storm Activity in the Western Atlantic During the Late Holocene and Late Pleistocene Sea-Level Supported with U-series Dated Fossil Corals”. Dr. Mortlock is collaborating with scientists at the USGS and students at Florida Atlantic University and U. Texas, Austin using Late Holocene age coral heads and drill cores, recovered with scuba, to reconstruct the frequency of hurricane events off the coast of SE Florida. The samples are critical to meeting USGS objectives: obtaining high-resolution, hundred-year paleo proxy records of sea-surface temperature (SST) for paleoclimate reconstruction.