Canada
Global
CAPE YORK PENINSULA, Aus. — An ancient tower of coral was discovered Sunday in the northern reaches of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. Roughly 500 meters in height, the natural wonder rivals some of the greatest manmade structures on Earth, including New York’s Empire State Building and Paris’ Eiffel Tower.
According to the BBC, the discovery of the coral formation was the first of its kind in 120 years.
Researchers aboard the vessel Falkor made the discovery as part of an expedition deployed by California-based non-profit, the Schmidt Ocean Institute (SOI), who are funding seafloor mapping research in the area.
In an interview with the BBC following the discovery, SOI’s executive director Dr. Jyotika Virmani expressed the overall excitement within his organization. “To find a new half-a-kilometre tall reef in the offshore Cape York area of the well recognized Great Barrier Reef shows how mysterious the world is just beyond our coastline.”
The initial discovery was made by the ROV SuBastian and was livestreamed directly on SOI’s youtube page, clocking in at a robust four-hour runtime.
“Today we are exploring this 500 m tall ‘detached’ reef,” researchers wrote in the Youtube video’s description, “one of seven other detached reefs offshore of Cape York Peninsula, which lie upon a ~500 m deep ledge extending out from below the Great Barrier Reef shelf. The dive will cross the broader base, then climb the steep flanks of the reef to the summit at about 50 m depth – an underwater mountain climb to find out what is living on this newly discovered reef.”
Chief scientist on the expedition, Dr. Robin Beaman, told Australian News Channel 7 in an interview that, due to the coral structure’s remoteness, it was unsurprising that it was still undiscovered.
“It’s what we call a detached reef,” Beaman explained in the newscast. “There are seven other detached reefs in the area and as far as we know this is the first 500-meter-tall reef discovered in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park in at least 120 years.”
Beaman’s colleague, Marine Geoscientist Dr. Marty O’Neill, also indicated in the newscast that the coral tower could be eons old.
“We think it could be millions of years old,” she said. “We think the basement of it is probably Myocene, which could be up to 22, 23 million years old. But the very top of it, of course, is a modern coral reef.”
Beaman says that the far northern reaches of the Cape York Peninsula had always been on his mind. The underwater region had never been mapped, so it was especially gratifying to be lead researcher on the project.
“I’ve been wanting to come up here and map for many, many years,’ he said. “I’ve hitchhiked on lots of research expeditions that have come close, but never quite this area. [The formation] is in these deeper waters that have been very rarely visited by vessels with modern mapping technology. So not only are we mapping it in three dimensions, but we’re also finding out what lives down there.
“It’s very much like climbing a mountain,” he continues, speaking of the ROV’s slow ascent to the peak of the coral tower. “And of course the top of this mountain, the summit, is this beautiful coral reef with fish and sharks—it’s quite an amazing reef!”