My family and I are flying to Australia tomorrow, so for this week’s “Monday Geology Picture” I thought I would share a view of the Great Barrier Reef that we took when we last visited Australia back in 2015 — before the serious coral bleaching events of 2016 and 2017. I’ll be sharing more Australia pictures soon, so stay tuned!
For today’s “Monday Geology Picture” post I thought I’d share one shot of the Great Barrier Reef that my husband took during our vacation to Australia last year. Stay tuned for some more pictures from that trip! One of the items on my blogging to-do list is sharing some more pictures and information from our Australian adventure.
For this week’s “Monday Geology Picture” post, I’m continuing with sharing some pictures from my vacation in Zanzibar back in June 2013. I thought I would share some pictures of a coral terrace on the beach near the village of Matemwe. My husband and I stayed at the beautiful resort of Azanzi near Matemwe. Most of the coral found along the beaches in Zanzibar is likely of Marine Isotope Stage 5e Pleistocene age (Arthurton et al., 1999).
Reference: Arthurton et al. (1999) Late Quaternary Coastal Stratigraphy on a Platform-Fringed Coast: A Case Study from Zanzibar, Tanzania. Journal of Coastal Research, Vol. 15, No. 3: 635-644.
Last week I shared some pictures of a coral palace in Zanzibar. This week, I’m sharing a few pictures of modern coral houses in the beachside village of Matemwe, which is located on Zanzibar’s northeastern coast. These days, more and more buildings in Zanzibar are being built out of concrete. This may be a good thing since mining of coral rock may not be the most eco-friendly building practice. However, some modern buildings, such as the one (in progress) in the photograph below, are still constructed from traditional coral building stone.
This week I’m continuing with sharing some pictures from my recent vacation in Zanzibar back in June 2013. There is plenty of coral around Zanzibar, and my husband and I noticed that many of Zanzibar’s buildings– both ancient and modern– have been built with coral blocks. As an example, the picture above shows a coral building stone in the Princess Mtoni Ruins, the remains of the childhood home of Princess Salme, a Zanzibari princess who in the 1860s eloped with a German merchant, converted to Christianity, and changed her name to Emily Ruete. While living in Germany, Emily / Princess Salme wrote an excellent book about her life: Memoirs of an Arabian Princess from Zanzibar. I read the book while I was in Zanzibar and highly recommend it. The book provides a rare, rich, colorful glimpse of Zanzibar– or at least of Zanzibari royal life– in the mid-1800s.
My husband and I visited the Mtoni Palace Ruins one morning on our way to Stone Town. We spent half and hour or so strolling through the ruins. Much of the Mtoni Palace that Princess Salme described in her memoirs has been destroyed or is in ruins, but the seaside palace is still definitely worth a visit. There are some interesting baths and toilets, and there are some beautiful arched doorways. I believe that much of the palace is constructed out of coral rock.
Here are a few more pictures from the Princess Mtoni Ruins:
Last week I shared some pictures of giant clam fossils on Chumbe Island, Zanzibar. This week, I’d sharing some pictures of fossil corals that I observed on Chumbe Island. Can anyone identify the corals?
Geology picture-a-day week continues here at Georneys. Today’s picture shows an impressive boulder of coral on a beach in Barbados. The lowermost part of the boulder has been undercut by wave erosion, providing a perfect nook for some geology students to take a closer look at the fossilized coral preserved in the boulder. The top part of the boulder has some soil and vegetation that has developed– a miniature island ecosystem!
I visited this Barbados beach in 2009 as part of a class field trip for the Geodynamics Course at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Graduate school is hard work sometimes, but the field trips have definitely been a nice benefit! As part of the yearly Geodynamics Course, I’ve been on three field trips– one to Costa Rica, one to Barbados, and one to Switzerland and Italy.
Here’s a closer look at the fossilized coral in the boulder in the above picture:
If you missed them, here’s Monday’s picture and Tuesday’s picture. Several geobloggers have joined the geology picture-a-day meme. Even if you missed the first two days, feel free to join in today!
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