In 1986 it got up close to the Titanic, and now deep-sea explorer Alvin is achieving more world firsts, this time documenting 1.2 miles of new reef featuring live coral that's thousands of years old.

"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.

Soft coral species in the deep sea exhibit bioluminescence, which researchers studied using remote-controlled underwater rovers. Many animals can glow in the dark.

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.

Taken by the deep-sea ROV Global Explorer, this image offered the scientists the first glimpse of the black coral species in its natural habitat. Image courtesy of Illuminating Biodiversity in ...

Black, Deep-Sea Coral That Can Live in Warm Waters Discovered. Published Nov 01, 2022 at 11:39 AM EDT Updated Nov 02, 2022 at 11:34 AM EDT. By .

But first, scientists recently discovered the largest known deep sea coral reef in the world. It’s called Million Mounds, and it stretches all the way from Miami to Charleston, South Carolina. It’s ...

On the upper-continental slope, about 80 miles off the coast of Delacroix in the Gulf of Mexico, is a coral reef unlike those found in shallow, tropical waters. More than 1,200 feet deep, this ...

The world's largest deep-sea coral reef, which spans an area roughly the size of Vermont, has been uncovered "right on the doorstep" of the southeast U.S. coastline, new seafloor maps reveal.

Deep sea coral habitat likely to get protection by closure of fisheries off NorCal coast A man and child explore the rocky Monterey Bay shoreline on a summer day at Lovers Point State Marine ...

But until now, it was unknown whether healthy, deep-sea corals produce a particular type of ROS, called superoxide (O2•-). Superoxide is a highly reactive ROS known for influencing ocean ecology ...