World's largest deep sea coral reef map available

The reef stretches about 500 km from Florida to South Carolina, and is up to 110 km wide at some points. Its total area is nearly three times the size of Yellowstone National Park.

“This is basically the largest deep-sea coral mound ever documented in the world,” Derek Sowers, chief mapping officer at the Ocean Exploration Fund and lead author of the study, told USA Today . He called it a “huge ecosystem” and “amazing.”

Đã có bản đồ rạn san hô biển sâu lớn nhất thế giới- Ảnh 1. — An alfonsino swims above a cold-water coral reef off the southeastern coast of the United States.

The success was reported in a paper published in the scientific journal Geomatics , detailing a multi-year campaign by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and its partners.

These mounds are made up of cold-water coral mounds. They are formed over long periods of time from skeletal material of "stony corals" and sediments trapped by coral debris.

Although researchers have known since 1960 that corals exist off the Atlantic coast, the extent of the coral cover remained a mystery until new underwater mapping technology helped create 3D images of the ocean floor, according to The Guardian .

“About 75% of the world's oceans are still unmapped at high resolution, and about 50% of US waters are currently unmapped,” said Sowers.

The reef is found at depths of 200 to 1,000 meters, where sunlight does not penetrate. Scientists say deep reefs provide habitat for sharks, swordfish, starfish, octopus, shrimp and many other types of fish.

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Tropical coral reefs are better known to scientists and divers because they are more accessible. Australia's Great Barrier Reef, the world's largest tropical coral reef system, stretches for about 2,300 km.

According to Mr. Sowers, the search on the ocean floor will continue. He predicts that many more large coral reefs will be found in the future.

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