Boilers - a photo on Flickriver

Boilers

View of 'boiler reefs' from the cliffs above Stonehole Bay on Bermuda's South Shore, Warwick Parish.

This is where 'Bermuda pink' comes from (see below).

The bird on the rock in the foreground (see note on photo) is a Kiskadee (Pitangus sulphuratus), a rather invasive species introduced from the American mainland and belonging to the tyrant flycatcher group. They are clever attractive opportunistic adaptable noisy birds whose name imitates their most common cry. They are seen in almost every possible habitat in Bermuda from small gardens to open see cliffs and rocks.

BERMUDA'S 'BOILER' REEFS

Immediately offshore along most of the South Shore of Bermuda there are 'boilers' like these, also known as 'boiler reefs' or 'algal cup reefs'. There are two lines of them here, the ones close to the cliffs and the ones just visible further out to sea. These are not dead rocks, but living things built by a mixture of plants and animals.

The reefs are broad columns of reef rock (limestone) with rimmed flat tops which are often wider than they are at the bottom, so shaped a bit like a mushroom. They are built mostly by crustose coralline algae in combination with the hydrozoan coral, Millepora, a few scleractinian corals ('stony corals'), encrusting vermetid snails (Dendropoma irregulare), and numerous other encrusters and borers, most conspicuously, the encrusting red protistan (foraminiferan), Homotrema rubrum (see flic.kr/p/dMJ4Nc). The tops of the 'boilers' are at the sea surface and their name is presumably derived from the way in which the breaking waves continuously surge around their circular rims, suggesting fancifully that the sea is boiling.

During hurricanes and storms, pieces of the reef get broken off, like this block of rock here, and cast on to the beaches. In time they are ground down to sand-sized grains, mostly white, but with many red fragments too from the red Homotrema. This combination of red and white grains gives the South Shore beach sand its famous pink colour.

Photo
Darkroom Daze © Creative Commons.
If you would like to use or refer to this image, please attribute.
ID: CIMG0243 - Version 2

Some rights reserved

Taken in: Bermuda / Warwick (show map)

Taken on: October 29, 2007

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Bermuda

Warwick_Parish

Stonehole_Bay

boiler

boiler_reef

algal_cup_reef

geology

sediment

limestone

carbonate

surf

sea

water

cliff

rock

stone

bird

animal

kiskadee

Pitangus_sulphuratus

wave

seascape

Atlantic_Ocean

bioconstruction

tyrant_flycatcher

reef

marine_biology

marine_ecology

biology

ecology

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Sets appears in: • Animals • Plants & Fungi more » • Geology, scenery & building stones: Bermuda • Bermuda: Parish of Warwick « less

Camera: CASIO COMPUTER CO.,LTD. EX-Z1050, f/4.4, 1/500 sec, 9.5mm, ISO 80 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	CASIO COMPUTER CO.,LTD. EX-Z1050
Aperture:	f/4.4
Exposure Time:	0.002 sec (1/500)
Focal Length:	9.5mm
ISO:	80
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program:	Program AE
Exposure Mode:	Auto
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Auto
Scene Capture Type:	Landscape
Contrast:	High
Saturation:	High
Sharpness:	Hard
Color Space:	sRGB
Software:	QuickTime 7.6.6
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