Bikini Atoll 50 Years Later
Posted on April 14, 2008 Comments (0)
“It was fascinating – I’ve never seen corals growing like trees outside of the Marshall Islands,” says Zoe Richards of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies in Australia. Richards and colleagues report a thriving ecosystem of 183 species of coral, some of which were 8 metres high. They estimate that the diversity of species represents about 65% of what was present before the atomic tests. The ecologists think the nearby Rongelap Atoll is seeding the Bikini Atoll, and the lack of human disturbance is helping its recovery.
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“When I put the Geiger counter near a coconut, which accumulates radioactive material from the soil, it went berserk,” says Beger.
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