Scientists Discover World’s Largest Coral After Mistaking It for Shipwreck

Coral reefs around the world are dying. It’s probably a good thing, then, that a team of researchers recently discovered a new patch of coral reef that’s so big it can be seen from space. So big the people who found it thought it was a shipwreck at first. So big that it can officially claim the title of “world’s largest coral.”

So big, in fact, that it’s three times larger than the previous record holder, a frankly pathetic patch of coral in American Samoa that will never be as handsome or charming as the newly discovered patch.

“In the first second I realized that I was looking at something unique,” marine biologist and underwater cinematographer Manu San Félix explained, per CNN. It’s “close to the size of a cathedral.”

The new coral reef, discovered during a scientific expedition launched by the National Geographic Pristine Seas program, can be found near the Solomon Islands in the southwest Pacific Ocean. It’s over 300 years old, 111 feet wide, and 104 feet long.

Where most coral reefs are made of a bunch of smaller colonies, this colossus is one giant organism with around a billion tiny polyps. It’s home to countless forms of marine life, and so old that it actually acts as a living archive of ocean conditions over the centuries.

Climate change has raised ocean temperatures and acidity, leading to widespread coral bleaching. Forty percent of warm water coral species are now facing extinction — and all because humanity can’t get its shit together enough to save the only planet we know how to live on.

That’s what makes this coral such a special find. In a world of dying coral reefs, we finally find an ancient one that is thriving. So, the question of course is why. One reason is that it’s in deeper waters that protect it from warm surface temperatures, though it’s far from fully protected from climate change.

The newly discovered coral will help scientists better understand how a coral of this magnitude was able to survive stark oceanic temperature shifts over hundreds of years.