"Many [deep-sea corals] live for hundreds of years, with some colonies living over 4,000 years," NOAA says, with latest discovery revealing nearly 84,000 individual coral mound peak features.

This story was updated at 5:01 p.m. EDT. A proposed rule from NOAA Fisheries would bar fishermen from using gear that touches the ocean bottom at a California marine sanctuary to protect rare deep ...

“Some of the deep-water corals can live for 2,000 years or more,” said Gardner, who works for NOAA’s Southeast Fisheries Science Center with multiple offices across the southeastern U.S ...

Deep-sea corals are still poorly understood, NOAA said, but studying them can provide insight into their health and resiliency which can help scientists predict "the impacts of human activities on ...

Largest deep-sea coral reef: How it was discovered The reef is too deep to explore by scuba diving, and that's why the mapping was done using 31 multi-beam sonars, according to the news release.

CREDIT: NOAA Ocean Exploration, Windows to the Deep 2021. Located off the Southeast United States, the Blake Plateau is an unusual, broad, flat feature with a steep drop-off into the very deep sea.

Deep-sea corals only grow a few millimeters per year, according to NOAA. For comparison, a human fingernail grows an average of 3.5 millimeters per month. S.C.'s fishing industry ...

Corals were coated in a clumpy brown material containing petroleum and the diversity of invertebrates took a nosedive. Altogether, more than 770 square miles of deep-sea and mesophotic — or low light ...

Following Deepwater Horizon’s release of 3.2 million barrels of oil, NOAA researchers found deep sea coral was damaged up to 16 miles from the leaking wellhead. The historic, $8.8 billion settlement ...

World’s largest deep-sea coral reef found off U.S. East Coast covers 6.4 million acres from Florida to South Carolina. ... Image courtesy of the NOAA Ocean Exploration, Windows to the Deep 2019.

Shannon Ainsworth, coral aquarist, right, hands Ben Higgins, a research fishery biologist, a specimen cup as he looks at coral under a microscope at the NOAA Southeast Fisheries Science Center Wet ...