Robots have discovered living coral on the Great Barrier Reef, far beyond the depth at which scientists expected to find them, The Guardian reports.
The coral reefs have been found at a 125 meters depth by a Catlin Seaview Survey team.
The Guardian quoted Dr Pim Bongaerts from the Global Change Institute at Queensland University as saying: “We found the plating Leptoseris corals at a depth of 125 metres. Although the corals are small and at such depth only consists of few species, it shows that there are viable communities living down there. The corals were attached to the rock surface and were certainly not individual corals which have fallen down to this depth. The discovery shows that there are coral communities on the reef existing at considerably greater depths than we could ever have imagined.”
Mr. Bongaerts expects that the findings will reveal how coral reefs have the capacity to survive at such depths.
[mappress] Subsea World News Staff, January 07, 2013