Kategorie: News
Coral reef discovered by scientists off the Galapagos Islands
Scientists have discovered a previously unknown coral reef off the coast of Ecuador's Galapagos Islands. The country's environment minister, Jose Davalos, announced this on Twitter: "A deep-sea scientific expedition has found the first completely untouched coral reef, about two kilometres long and 400 metres deep, at the top of a submarine mountain... Galapagos surprises us again!"
Researchers have discovered the pristine coral reef off the Galapagos Islands. The reef stretches across the crest of a sunken volcano at a depth of 400 to 600 metres and is several kilometres long. Scientists from Ecuador, the USA and Great Britain found the unique ecosystem during a dive with a submarine during the Galapagos Deep 2023 expedition in the middle of the archipelago, the Charles Darwin Foundation announced yesterday.
Very old and essentially untouched
This is exciting news for scientists, as many coral reefs around the world are suffering from climate change and coral bleaching. Michelle Taylor, co-leader of the Galápagos Deep Expedition 2023, says the newly discovered reef is "teeming with life".
"The fascinating thing about this reef is that it is very old and essentially untouched, unlike reefs in many other parts of the world's oceans," said Stuart Banks of the Charles Darwin Foundation. "It can also help us reconstruct past marine ecosystems to understand climate change today." Until now, Wellington Reef in the north of the archipelago was considered one of the few coral reefs off the Galapagos that had survived the El Nino climate phenomenon in the early 1980s.
Typically, coral reefs in the deep sea have only ten to 20 per cent living coral. "The reef we found has 50 to 60 per cent live coral in many areas, which is really rare," said Michelle Taylor from the University of Essex. "It's pristine and teeming with life - pink squid, sea bats, lobsters and a variety of deep-sea fish, sharks and rays."