Colorful coral seabeds a "breathtaking" discovery
Clinging to the seafloor of the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary is a candy-colored jungle: waving pink fans, giant yellow cups and slender, feathery-tipped creatures that look a bit like old fountain pens.
On an expedition off Washington's coast, government scientists for the first time have documented the most extensive collection of corals and sponges ever found in the vast ocean between California's sun-fed reefs and the deep coral gardens of western Alaska.
Researchers had known for about two years that there were unusual corals in Washington's ocean waters. But they have been taken aback by the sheer variety and beauty of this discovery. Less than 5 percent of the 3,300-square-mile sanctuary's seafloor has ever been seen by human eyes.
With a remote-controlled vehicle that traveled 300 to 2,000 feet below the ocean's surface, scientists photographed brilliant red corals with bulbous knobs poking from stems as thick as cigars. At sites three to 20 miles off the coast, they saw orange corals and white corals with delicate branches, and a stony reef-forming creature more common to the Atlantic Ocean.
"It was really breathtaking," said Mary Sue Brancato, a researcher for the marine sanctuary. "We'd see these huge red sea corals atop boulders that had rockfish all over them."
Said Bob Steelquist, education coordinator for the sanctuary: "It just shows how little we may know about a place even as close as a few miles off Cape Flattery."
Continue reading this article from the Seattle Times:
Colorful coral seabeds a breathtaking discovery
