Jonathan Cybulski, recently named National Geographic Young Explorer, thesis’ research focuses on the paleoecology of Hong Kong’s coral ecosystem – it is his job to tell the story of this ecosystem through time. One of the first major stressors to Hong Kong corals was the slaked lime industry (that thrived for several hundred years) which harvested live coral colonies for their calcium carbonate skeleton . The skeleton was then burned to create lime for buildings and export. Jonathan is working with a local archaeologist to excavate historic kilns around Hong Kong in order to collect fossils and talk about the specific corals impacted at the time. However, in order to better understand the historic industry and harvesting process, Jonathan will employ a classic ethnoarchaeology technique. He will visit Sri Lanka to study one of the last remaining modern-day analogs of this industry, in order to better understand how humans may have biased the corals selected for processing. This research is funded through a National Geographic grant that Jonathan wrote with his supervisor Dr. David Baker. Jon feels honored to be considered a National Geographic Young Explorer, and looks forward to reporting his findings and better characterizing coral ecosystem impacts for future conservation efforts.