DAILY MAIL SCIENCE : REEF TEEMING WITH UNKNOWN SPECIES article my Matthew Phelan
Excerpts: Marine scientists have found and mapped the world's largest known deep-sea coral reef: a hidden ecosystem roughly the size of Vermont teeming with new species.
The discovery was the painstaking product of 23 submersible dives and 31 multibeam sonar mapping surveys, researchers revealed, all in the service of charting the Atlantic ocean's deep-set Blake Plateau.
The plateau's deep-sea or cold-water coral ecosystem stretches nearly 311 miles from Miami, Florida to Charleston, South Carolina. And it's east-to-west width reaches passed 68 miles in some regions.
Unlike shallow ocean coral, which feeds itself in part via the photosynthesis of zooxanthellae algae, and can be harmed by the heat of climate change, this D. pertusum coral filter feeds off floating biological particles, like dead cells and microorganisms.
And, like a pale cave fish, this cold-water coral is an eerie spectral white.
No comments:
Post a Comment