Photo. A part of the Great Barrier Reef in the northern Australia - a natural wonder of the world. But now it's time to look towards west for a new huge coral reef!
The new reef has probably been undiscovered until now because most of it is more than 20 metres below the surface and because of its remoteness. The nearest big settlement is the town of Karumba 250 kilometres to the south-east. The reef is likely to have been formed 40,000-80,000 years ago, when sea levels were 30 metres lower than the present. The fresh coral spotted by the expedition may be much more recent, growing up within the past 1,000 years.
The discovery of hard coral in the area comes as a complete surprise. Conventional scientific wisdom says that no reefs can exist in Australia's warm, muddy coastal waters west of the Great Barrier Reef's northern limits in the Torres Strait. It has always been thought that the gulf was too clogged with sediment for reefs to grow, and the Geoscience Australia expedition had originally set out to investigate the movements of sediment in its waters.
Thanks to the Austrialian scentists a new paradise has been revealed for eager scuba divers. Is it too deep, or what are you waiting for?
Stein Morten Lund, 11 June 2003
Additional information:
Source:
CDNN - CYBER DIVER News Network by David Fickling (Powered by ScubaPoll: Conservation Organizations).
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