Scientists have found the world’s largest-known habitat of deep-sea corals off the Southeast coast and a significant portion lies just 90 miles offshore from Georgia.
The nearly continuous formation covers 6.4 million acres of the sea floor, an area larger than the state of Vermont. It was discovered by a team of researchers from the federal National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other agencies, plus several universities and ocean exploration companies.
The corals were documented during a multi-year mapping campaign of the Blake Plateau, an underwater plain off the U.S.’ East Coast. The findings were published earlier this month in the peer-reviewed journal Geomatics.
The deep-sea corals cover an area that is roughly 310 miles long and 68 miles wide stretching from near Charleston, South Carolina, all the way down to Miami.
Unlike the barrier reefs and atolls favored by snorkelers, the corals off the Southeast coast are in clusters of mounds — the scientists identified 83,908 individual mounds across the study area. And they are located in much deeper water, with formations lying anywhere from a few hundred feet to 3,000 feet below the surface.
Atlanta Journal Constitution
