Researchers at Australia’s Great Barrier Reef say that they have discovered giant mounds of previously undiscovered coral dotting the Australian seabed, interspersed with the existing reef system.
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Fortunately, Royal Australian Navy aircraft fitted with LiDAR remote sensing technology have been flying over the area, and have finally mapped the shape, size, and vast scale of the deep reef.
“If you go scuba diving, you won’t know how deep they are or how large they are because most of the time you don’t go below 20metres”, Beaman said. The rings are known as bioherms. They form when green algae called Halimeda die and form flakes of limestone. According to a press release, the bioherms-formed over 10,000 years-can be almost 1,000 feet across with holes up to 32 feet deep.
Mardi McNeil, geoscience researcher at the Queensland University of Technology said that scientists were aware about Halimedabiohermspresence on the Great Barrier Reef, but their sheer extent left them in shock.
“We’ve known about these geological structures in the northern Great Barrier Reef since the 1970s and 80s, but never before has the true nature of their shape, size and vast scale been revealed”, Dr. Robin Beaman of JCU said in a press release.
Lurking in the deeper seafloor behind the familiar coral reefs was an astounding discovery. These bioherms are made from Halimeda, a common species of green algae.
An Australian university survey has found that tourists were in a mad rush to visit the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland as they believed it would not be there for long.
Our oceans harbour many secrets, but scientists claim to have revealed one of them after discovering an enormous reef-like structure off the coast of Australia. LiDAR creates precise, 3-D maps of Earth’s surface, often by scanning the ground with lasers from an airplane or helicopter.
North-westerly view of the hidden reef.
“For instance, what do the 10-20 meter thick sediments of the bioherms tell us about past climate and environmental change on the Great Barrier Reef over this 10,000-year time scale?” he asks.
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This means these bioherms can unfold the secrets of damage caused by the shift in environmental conditions in the last 10,000 years and can also provide a deep insight into the life pattern of marine life now existing in the area.
