A group of researchers has made an unlikely discovery off the Atlantic coast: an enormous coral reef, around 85 miles long, that had remained hidden from humans until now. This reef could have existed for hundreds of thousands of years.

The ocean floor is one of the last great unexplored regions of our planet. There’s so much about our ocean that we still don’t know, so it should come as no surprise that we’re still finding huge structures like this reef.

The researchers in question are from the research vessel Atlantis, and have been on a mission to explore some of the unknown depths off the coast of Georgia. The team planned a dozen deep sea dives to a series of locations where no humans have ever been, using the research submarine Alvin—which famously discovered the wreck of the Titanic—to carry scientists to those depths.

While on one of those dives, the researchers discovered a coral reef where no one knew a reef existed. Further trips to study that reef concluded it extended for at least 85 miles, and has existed for at least the past few thousand years. When old corals die in the reef, new corals simply grow on top of them, so the researchers could see the entire history of the reef from the samples they’ve collected.

The scientists suspect that this reef plays a crucial role in supplying fish to regional fisheries, which makes it crucial that this reef survives and thrives. The reef could be threatened by potential oil and gas drilling, which would severely impact those fisheries.

Source: HuffPost

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