7/28/2019 Divers Discover 52000-Year-old Cypress Forest in Gulf of Mexico

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/divers-discover-52000-year-old-cypress-forest-in-gulf-of-mexico 1/1

Divers Discover 52,000 Year Old Cypress ForestUnderwater, Exposed by Hurricane Katrina 

July 10, 2013 | By Anna Hunt | Reply More 

Christina Sarich, Staff Writer  Waking Times 

Covering more than .5 square miles in the deepest waters of the Gulf of Mexico, divers have uncoveredan enormous Cypress forest. It will probably be destroyed in just a few years by wood-burrowing marinelife now that it has been exhumed from numerous layers of sediment, but experts believe this hiddenarbor, now being called the Bald Cypress Forest, is more than 52,000 years old. The Cypress are so wellpreserved that, when scientists took the thinnest cut to determine their age, you could still smell the scentof fresh Cypress sap.

Local fishermen found a site near the coast of Atlanta that was particularly full of fish and other marinelife. They weren’t quite sure why. Suspecting that there might be something hidden under the Gulf water’ssurface, the fisherman confided in a dive shop owner who eventually decided to look into the deeperwaters in person to see what he could find. The diver discovered an extraordinary underwater forest butrefused to disclose the location for years. He told another diver, named Ben Raines, but swore him tosecrecy in 2012. The forest has become an artificial reef - a habitat for all kinds of fish, crustaceans,anemones, and various marine wildlife. The layers of sediment covering the forest had been protectingthe reef by creating an oxygen-free environment.

Raines broke his silence and put together a team of a few scientists to create a sonar map to measurethe breadth of the forest and also took samples to try to date the trees. The age given to the underwaterforest, 52,000 years, will likely help scientists learn more about the climate during the Wisconsin Glacialperiod, when sea levels were much lower than they are today. The Wisconsin glaciation extended fromapproximately 85,000 to 11,000 years ago.

A researcher from Louisiana State University, Kristin DeLong, will dive the site this year to explore it morecompletely. Another team of scientists is applying for grants, but they will need these grants to beawarded expeditiously since a dendrochronologist (someone who determines the age of trees by their

rings) says the forest will probably only remain for two years before being devoured by sea organisms.

This is yet another underwater discovery that proves we know less about our own deep seas than wemight have imagined. Other recent finds include a first century B.C. stonecutter, submerged DNA inGreece, a possible crashed UFO between Finland and Sweden in the Baltic Sea, and pyramids ofglass found in the Bermuda Triangle.