Huge cold-water coral reef discovered off the US East Coast
Published: Thursday, Jan 18th 2024, 12:51
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One of the world's largest cold-water coral reefs has been discovered off the east coast of the USA. It stretches from Miami to the city of Charleston, almost 800 kilometers to the north, according to the oceanographic agency NOAA on Wednesday (local time).
The reef has an area of just under 25,900 square kilometers - roughly the size of the US state of Florida, or around two thirds of the area of Switzerland.
It is one of the largest deep-sea coral reefs that has ever been discovered in the world. Coral mounds had already been found near the coast and in shallower waters in earlier surveys of the area. However, only after the complete mapping of the so-called Blake Plateau at a depth of 500 to 1000 meters will it be known "how extensive this habitat is and how many of these coral mounds are connected to each other".
The discovery was preceded by ten years of systematic mapping of the area and more than 20 exploratory dives. The results of the research project, in which NOAA and other US authorities were involved, were published in the journal "Geomatics" on January 12.
Deep sea still largely unexplored
According to the researchers, cold-water corals grow at temperatures between 4 and 14 degrees in the deep sea, where no sunlight reaches them. The so-called cnidarians feed on suspended matter in the water. So far, cold-water coral reefs have been discovered off the coasts of at least 41 countries, according to the study. Scientists assume an even wider distribution, but most of the deep sea has not yet been explored and mapped.
According to the data, the reefs at depth grow only slowly and are therefore susceptible to physical damage caused by human activities. The greatest threats to cold-water corals include fishing with bottom trawls, the extraction of raw materials from the deep sea and the laying of underwater cables and pipelines.
©Keystone/SDA
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