Galapagos Environment Minister José Dávalos announced that a scientific expedition that was exploring the deep waters of the Galapagos Marine Reserve has discovered a new coral reef, totally untouched, whose existence was unknown.
Via Twitter, the minister underlined that "the Galapagos surprises us again with the discovery of a coral reef 400 meters deep on a seamount, approximately two kilometers long, with abundant marine life and more than 50% of the corals are alive".
The exceptionality of the discovery concerns the fact that until now it was believed that the Wellington reef, off the coast of Darwin was the only one that survived the effects of the El Niño phenomenon of 1982-1983.
Dávalos indicated that "this is encouraging news. This reaffirms our will to establish new marine protected areas in Ecuador and to continue promoting the creation of a regional area in the eastern tropical Pacific".
For his part Stuart Banks, a researcher at the Charles Darwin Foundation, who participated in the expedition, argued that "the fascinating thing about these Galapagos coral reefs is that they are ancient, undisturbed for centuries or thousands of years, and essentially pristine, a unlike those found in many other parts of the world's oceans".
The discovery of the new coral reef was made using a vehicle called Alvin, capable of descending up to 3,000 meters deep from the Atlantis ship, as part of the Galapagos Deep 2023 scientific expedition which will end on April 20th.
