“And once damaged, corals may take hundreds, and in some cases, more than 1,000 years to recover, if they come back at all. Among the many threats facing reefs, Brooke says, the greatest physical impact comes from fishing gear—heavy trawl nets dragged on the seafloor, weighted fishing lines, and traps secured by chains or ropes—that breaks corals or stirs up sediments that can suffocate them. Other threats to corals include warming water, ocean acidification, industrial equipment used in oil and gas exploration, deployment of pipelines or underwater communications cables that get dragged along the seafloor, and the emerging threat of deep sea mining.”[1] “Throughout the world, scientists have documented at least 3,300 species of deep-sea corals, including a 4,270-year-old black coral specimen off Hawaii that is the oldest known living marine organism. Although fishermen have long known about deep-sea corals, scientists did not fully understand these ecosystems until manned mini-submarines allowed researchers to travel to the depths.”[2] “Brooke’s first journey in the famous Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute’s submersible Alvin, in 1999, took her to seabed fissures that spew water heated from deep within the planet. These hydrothermal vents play host to other-worldly species such as giant tubeworms, and as the vents shift with the tectonic plates, corals can colonize the bare rock left behind.” Corals can take up to 1,000 years to grow to heights of eight stories high like a black coral that was dated to around 4,265 years old. Source: Pew2
Deep sea corals provide us with a history of the earth’s climate through their tree rings that can be chemically anlaysed.
