Deep-sea coral reef stretches 600 miles from Miami to SC, scientists find
Alfonsino fish swim over a field of Lophelia pertusa in the massive reef discovered off the eastern U.S. Coast. - NOAA Ocean Exploration, Windows to the Deep 2019/NOAA/TNS
January 17, 2024 | 04:54PM ETBankCHARLOTTE, N.C. — The world’s largest deep-sea coral reef has been discovered off the East Coast: a massive 6.4 million acre seascape that stretches from Miami to Charleston, South Carolina, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Ocean Exploration. That makes it larger than Vermont, NOAA says. The discovery, published Jan. 12 in the journal Geomatics, disproves a long held belief that the Blake Plateau in the Atlantic might be a dead zone. Instead, scientists found a “stunning” ecosystem populated by “dense thickets of the reef-building coral.” “For years we thought much ...
