Huge New Coral Reef Discovered

Scientists in Australia have stumbled on an uncharted coral reef the size of Jersey in Queensland's Gulf of Carpentaria. At 120 sq km, it covers a larger area than all the reefs of Barbados put together.

"We were absolutely stunned when we lowered a video camera down there and saw living hard corals," said Peter Harris, who led the Geoscience Australia expedition. "We had thought it was just a relic from lower sea levels."

The reef has probably escaped notice until now because most of it is more than 20m below the surface and because of its remoteness. The nearest big settlement is the town of Karumba 250km to the south-east.

The reef is likely to have formed 40,000-80,000 years ago, when sea levels were 30m lower than at 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.

"I'm very curious to see if this sort of thing is not more widespread in the area," Mr Harris said.