Atolls: Past, Present and Future?

“Now as the island sinks down, either a few feet at a time or quite insensibly, we may safely infer from what is known of the conditions favorable to the growth of coral, that the living masses, bathed by the surf on the margin of the reef, will soon regain the surface. The water however, will encroach little by little on the shore, the island becoming lower and smaller, and the space between the inner edge of the reef and the beach proportionally broader...We can now at once see why encircling barrier-reefs stand so far from the shores which they front. We can also perceive, that a line drawn perpendicularly down from the outer edge of the new reef, to the foundation of solid rock beneath the old fringing-reef, will exceed by as many feet as there have been feet of subsidence, that small limit o

Some topics in this essay:
Indian Ocean, Atolls Darwin, Future Darwin, Marshall Islands, Hawaii Tuvaluans, Tarawa Abanuea, fringing reefs, Pacific Ocean, coral reefs, barrier reefs, island sinks, reefs barrier reefs, indian ocean, sea level, global warming, atolls formation, sinks corals, atolls past,