​Dongsha Atoll, 2015
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ABOUT ME

NEWS: I will be joining Hawai'i Pacific University as an assistant professor of oceanography in Fall 2020!

Oceanography is a fascinating and important field that offers a wealth of environmental essay topics, and a growing understanding of the complex interactions between the ocean and the rest of the Earth system. I am broadly interested in understanding mechanisms of the sensitivity, and resilience, of coral calcification to ocean acidification and warming. ​I received my PhD from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, where I blended a variety of field and laboratory techniques aimed at understanding coral responses to a rapidly changing ocean environment. I completed my first post-doc at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at The University of Western Australia between 2017-2019, during which I developed Raman spectroscopy as a tool for quantifying the chemistry of the micro-scale site of calcification where corals grow the crystals that are ultimately used to build their skeletons. I am currently a post-doc at the Red Sea Research Center at KAUST, where I am using skeletal cores from massive, long-lived corals to reconstruct the history of coral bleaching events in the Red Sea.

​In addition to these projects, my long-term goal is to build a research program around "The Oceanography of Coral Bleaching". While global warming is driving an increase in the frequency of mass coral bleaching events worldwide, there is so much more complexity due to the oceanographic setting of each individual coral reef. For example, certain reef systems are exposed to internal waves that may cool the resident corals during heatwaves, while other reefs may be exposed to nutrient injections that make them more susceptible to bleaching. Disentangling these oceanographic processes will help us predict when and where we may find coral reefs that are relatively resistant to rising temperatures, and this information will be critical to informing local management decisions.

Google Scholar
ResearchGate
Publons peer reviews

Drilling a 2+ meter core from a massive coral on the Great Barrier Reef

Just some of the cores I collected on the Great Barrier Reef (see meter stick on left for scale)

An instrument platform constructed on a remote coral reef in the South China Sea

Science on a raft!

Tweets by thomasmdecarlo

Publications

​View my recent publications by clicking on the images to the right

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