Gary C. Williams ’72 (Curator of Invertebrate Zoology, California Academy of Sciences) and Michele M. Masuda ’87 co-authored A Guide to the Corals of Alaska, the most current and comprehensive guide to 161 cold-water corals in Alaska, including the extraordinarily rich Aleutian Islands. The 416-page guide provides a profile for each coral species, including photos, characteristics of the coral, taxonomic history, biology, ecology, habitat, and geographical and depth distributions. The guide also includes a newly described species, Flabellum (Flabellum) oclairi Cairns, 2023, a cup coral collected near Amchitka Island in the Aleutian Islands. This versatile guide will prove invaluable for species identification in the field and lab as well as appeal to the lay reader who may be curious of the rich and colorful communities in the depths of Alaska. A Guide to the Corals of Alaska by Robert P. Stone, Stephen D. Cairns, Dennis M. Opresko, Gary C. Williams, and Michele M. Masuda. 2023. NOAA Professional Paper NMFS. Available online https://doi.org/10.7755/PP.23
Michele M. Masuda
June 25, 2024
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