Dr Seuss couldn’t dream up this stuff. Forests of ancient corals. Clusters of undersea urchins with cactus-like spikes, as if a desert had been inundated. Gardens of glassy sponges, clinging to the slopes of an underwater mountain range soaring up thousands of feet from the seafloor.
Off the coast of Chile, deep-sea explorers deploying an underwater robot that can descend more than 4200 metres may have found more than 100 species completely new to science across 10 seamounts.
Washington Post