WEBVTT

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Truly magnificent garden of coral fans. I don't think we've seen these densities yet today, and possibly not yet on the expedition.

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Certainly, we haven't seen these densities at these depths.

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So we're at 2,300 meters here.

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Really dramatic terrain on this ridge top.

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Maybe these more vertical settings create sort of the micro habitat that initiates these denser colonies of bamboo coral we're seeing.

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As we move over here, we can see all the fans are lined up and that gives you an idea of where the currents are coming from.

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These fans are likely hundreds, if not over a thousand, years old.

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So that gives the sense that although this looks unstable, these blocks have been sitting in their current position for quite some time.

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I think this is a really good illustration that we need a lot of factors coming together in order to find these high-density communities.

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We need to have the right underlying geology. We need to have the current flow.

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We need to have food available and you need to have the recruiting corals in an area that is stable enough that they can grow for long periods of time,

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then you get to see all these really large, old colonies.

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To my recollection, we haven't seen anything quite like this in the Gulf of Mexico so far.

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We're starting to see all the different things that have to come together to make really great communities.

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And those are going to help inform models of coral densities.

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So that in the future, we can become even better at predicting where we may find communities like this and planning our exploration dives accordingly.