I traveled to American Samoa in November 2011 to collect cores from a massive Porites coral colony off the island of Ta'u.  Along with my colleagues Robert Dunbar and David Mucciarone from Stanford University, we recovered three cores (4m, 4.1m, and 6.1m). We sealed all 3 drill holes when we were done with concrete plugs. The longest core extends from 2011 to 1521 C.E. Data from these samples is helping us understand El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) dynamics and changes in coral calcification processes in response to atmospheric CO2 influx into the surface ocean.  See these papers on my main LDEO page.

Linsley, B. K., R. B. Dunbar, E. P. Dassié, N. Tangri, H. C. Wu, L. D. Brenner, G. M. Wellington, Coral Carbon Isotope Sensitivity to Growth Rate and Water Depth with Palaeo-Sea Level Implications,  Published on-line May 3, 2019,  Nature Communications, (2019) 10:2056|  URL: https://rdcu.be/bz11c

Tangri, N., R. B. Dunbar, B. K. Linsley, D. A. Mucciarone, ENSO's Shrinking 20th Century Footprint Revealed in a Half‐millennium Coral Core from the South Pacific Convergence Zone, Paleoceangraphy and Paleoclimatology, First published online: 11 October 2018 https://doi.org/10.1029/2017PA0033