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\u2013 credit, G\u00e9rard Zinzindohou\u00e9 via SWNS<\/p>\n \u2013 credit, G\u00e9rard Zinzindohou\u00e9 via SWNS<\/p>\n
A coral reef long presumed dead has been rediscovered \u201cteeming with life\u201d off the coast of West Africa.<\/p>\n
Surveys conducted in the 1960s that were focused on identifying promising fishing areas, flagged a possible deep-water coral reef, but scientists at the time it assumed must be dead.<\/p>\n
Now, using a modern sonar survey, scientists have found an apparently healthy reef\u2014an amazing discovery that was described in the journal<\/a> Frontiers in Marine Science.<\/p>\n After days of \u201cdifficult\u201d field work, the sonar revealed structures which the team interpreted as a coral reef, and hopes were raised.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a mix of long days at sea, technical problems, and a lot of uncertainty,\u201d lead author G\u00e9rard Zinzindohou\u00e9 said of the effort. \u201cI still remember seeing those first images.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a mix of excitement and disbelief, because after all this time thinking about this reef, suddenly there was something real in front of us.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Zinzindohou\u00e9 and his colleagues at the Institute of Halieutic and Oceanographic Research in Cotonou, Benin, reasoned that it could have been a mesophotic coral ecosystem.<\/p>\n A mesophotic coral ecosystem lives deeper than the usual shallow coral reefs, in zones where light is much more limited, he explains.<\/p>\n \u201cUnlike typical shallow reefs, it does not always form a single continuous reef structure. Instead, it can appear as patchy or scattered coral communities spread across the seafloor.\u201d<\/p>\n Using the historical surveys as a guide, the research team surveyed 7 miles of seabed with sonar. To investigate the most promising areas, the team used an underwater drone, and the Deep Sea Camera System, provided by the National Geographic Exploration Technology Lab.<\/p>\n The footage showed a seemingly healthy reef, with 8 different types of coral and 8 species of fish sheltering and feeding around the corals.<\/p>\n The fish included golden African snappers, blackbar soldierfish, Guinean angelfish, West African goatfish, the Monrovia doctorfish, three-banded butterflyfish, and two species of damselfish.<\/p>\n The reef doesn\u2019t seem to be a continuous coral barrier, but patches of coral occupying rocky areas suitable for their growth, although researchers say it\u2019s possible that further surveys will identify more reefs.<\/p>\n \u201cTo our knowledge, this is the first confirmed record of a living mesophotic coral ecosystem on the Gulf of Guinea continental shelf. However, I think what we found is probably not an exception.\u201d<\/p>\n