Scientists have discovered a 600 mile coral reef

[Tamberav]

Sorry if this is a repost. I wonder what unique critters live there The oil drilling is sad though

 

http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/04/scientists-discover-a-new-coral-reef-at-the-amazons-mouth/479259/

[Sherman]

Interesting....

[william_payne1]

love the snail pic with title "One of the early coral specimens retrieved by the researchers"

[dpoltsdsu]

Really interesting stuff. The waters around there are very murky and there's a ton of nutrients in the water. Two characteristics that usually don't go hand in hand with wild reef systems. The water there is also probably at a lower salinity due to Amazon River system flowing into it. Assuming the reef is made of reef building hard corals, it will be really interesting to see what kind live there and what adaptions they have made.

[Tamberav]

Here is another article from the Smithsonian, shows better pictures and they suspect they have found new species.

 

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/shining-light-brazils-secret-coral-reef-180958872/?no-ist

 

love the snail pic with title "One of the early coral specimens retrieved by the researchers"

 

lol yeah!! I wish my conch snail had all sorts of hitchikers on it though...

 

 

Really interesting stuff. The waters around there are very murky and there's a ton of nutrients in the water. Two characteristics that usually don't go hand in hand with wild reef systems. The water there is also probably at a lower salinity due to Amazon River system flowing into it. Assuming the reef is made of reef building hard corals, it will be really interesting to see what kind live there and what adaptions they have made.

 

I am thinking a lot of non-photosyntheic corals but they did find favias it looks like and the rock looks to have coraline algae.

 

"They also uncovered unique microbes that seem to base their metabolism not on light but on minerals and chemicals such as ammonia, nitrogen and sulfur."

[Alexraptor]

Favias do have the advantage of being active feeders and many are actually "low light" corals. Quite a few strains of coraline algae are also low-light.

[ReeferBoo]

Saw this the other day, what an epic discovery.

[jimmyree]

Sorry if this is a repost. I wonder what unique critters live there The oil drilling is sad though

 

http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/04/scientists-discover-a-new-coral-reef-at-the-amazons-mouth/479259/

Dredging for coral doesn't seem a whole lot more responsible IMO.

[fishfreak0114]

This is so neat!!! I hope it gets the protection it needs

[Pinner Reef]

This is pretty cool. Like Tamb said I'd bet the coral are mostly nonphotosynthetic. They have a friggin submersible on the boat so I don't see why they don't launch that thing... besides the lack of visability. Let's see this thing! The entire 600mi reef coudn't all be covered at once.

[Reefer69]

Made it to CNN. Its must be important now!!!

 

http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/23/world/amazon-river-coral-reef-irpt/index.html