New Florida Reef Found

[Sherri]

Thought this was interesting....

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/01/02/deepest.reef.ap/index.html

[Jenn]

That is really interesting. The corals have adapted to the low light - and blue ones! Wow!

[cvonseggern]

Joshua, I have to disagree. At the rate we're going, it'll probably crash due to some human activity or other within a few years, or at the most, decades. It's not that these ecosystems need our "help" so much that they need us to stop wrecking them.

Chris

[Tim Marvin]

Now that it has been found it needs to be protected! Especially with BLUE corals that require low light! Do you realize what would happen if a few of these hit our market and people could have awesome color with a couple 40 watt bulbs!!!! Light business would drop and these corals would be harvested at alarming rates, for high dollar and extreme damage to the reef. Diving to those depths would only be for a few minutes so care would not be taken when harvesting and lots of greedy divers would die.

[theedprado]

now what i want are deep water biolumanescent corals for a nightime glow in the dark tank!!

[Ram_Puppy]

I agree, protection is needed, when you think about it, at that depth, and still needing light, what would a bad fertilizer runoff induced algae bloom due if it lasted for any significant amount of time?

one wonders if collection is even viable, could the organisms survive ascent?

[GaryP]

At that depth it wouldn't even take a 40W bulb. More like a moonlight. You'd have lots of discussions on RC about the PAR value of different moonlight bulbs.

Divers go to those sort of depths to harvest black coral for jewelry making.

Gary

[::pete::]

All Josh was saying is it didnt need us before ... so why now!!! Now that we know its there its probably going to be worse off protected or not!!! I would bet there are different depths undiscovered all over the world as different species are being found regularly.

As for the flood to the reefs to get the low light corals ... thats no different than gouging it for the bright colors!!! It will be done regardless because there is too much money to be made not only by the collectors (hahaha) and distributors/exporters, but the GOVERNMENT as well !!!!!

I personally would love to have a beautiful reef tank with BLUES lit by a bulb from HD.