[Coral-List] Greetings from the Amazon Reef

[Sander Scheffers]

Hey John,

I believe you are describing a lot a beautifully connected? coral or sponge communities. A true ecologist or geologist would not call it a coral reef.

Nonetheless, a great description of a system not described before.

Cheers, Sander

Dr. Sander Scheffers

Senior Lecturer (Hoogleraar), School of Environment, Science & Engineering, Southern Cross University

Honorary Research Fellow, University of Queensland, QLD, Australia

Associate Researcher, Caribbean Institute for Biodiversity (CARMABI), Curacao, Netherlands Antilles

Military Rd, Lismore NSW 2477
T: 02 6620 3277<tel:02%206620%203277> | E: sander.scheffers at scu.edu.au<mailto:sander.scheffers at scu.edu.au>
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On 6 Feb 2017, at 22:51, John Hocevar <jhocevar at greenpeace.org<mailto:jhocevar at greenpeace.org>> wrote:

Dear Colleagues,

I'm on the Greenpeace ship Esperanza, working with a team of Brazilian
scientists to explore a 600 mile long reef, much of which lies beneath
the plume of the Amazon. Scientists have been aware that there was
something out here since the 1970s. A paper published last year showing
the massive scale of the reef got quite a lot of attention. After just a
week of diving here, it appears that it may be even larger still. As you
might imagine, we are finding quite a lot of surprises here.

This reef was formed at least in part by rhodoliths rather than corals,
but has corals living on it. The mesophotic portion has quite a lot of
black coral, and we have seen stony corals in shallower areas. One one
dive (we are using a Dual DeepWorker submarine for our surveys), there
was a dense field of soft corals covering over 90% of the substrate.
There are quite a lot of reef associated species here, including
parrotfish, angelfish, wrasses, damselfish, groupers, butterflyfish, etc.

As we just begin to try to understand this new biome, it is already
under threat. BP and Total plan to drill for oil in the area as early as
this spring.

For more info and images (and for a petition calling on a halt to
drilling), visithttps://amazonreefs.org/ <https://amazonreefs.org/>

John Hocevar
Oceans Campaign Director
Greenpeace USA
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