A new sponge and coral reef more than 600 miles long located at the mouth of the Amazon River has been recently discovered by a team of Brazilian and American scientists. It appears to sprawl across more than 3,600 square miles of the oceanic floor, and is at a depth of about 30 to 120 meters (98 to 393 feet) below the muddy waters.

Unfortunately, this unexpected discovery has been made at a site already marked for oil explorations. How this huge coral reef has gone unnoticed for so long, has left the government, scientists and oil companies quite flabbergasted. Reefs generally flourish in sunlit, clear, salty waters; but all this time beneath the murkiest of waters, defying nature, was a reef thriving with life - corals, sponges, algae, fish, and stars alike.

The thirst for oil however leaves the coral reefs under a great threat. The exploration for oil has supposedly already begun in certain areas. Presumably, around 80 blocks of the area situated at the mouth of the river has been sold by the Brazilian government for the purpose of oil exploration.

It is further believed that 20 of these 80 blocks (25 percent) are already producing oil, and might be located right above the endangered coral reef.

"These [exploration] blocks will soon be producing oil in close proximity to the reefs, but the environmental baseline compiled by the companies and the Brazilian government is ... largely based on sparse museum specimens. Such large-scale industrial activities present a major environmental challenge," said the study's authors.

Over and beyond oil production, the Amazonian reef is facing other dangerous threats such as industrial fisheries and climatic changes.

Further on a global scale, coral reefs around the world are suffering from the largest bleaching event on record.

The newly discovered coral reef is apparently home to more than 60 species of sponges, 73 different species of fish, lobsters, starfish and other reef life, and is under grave danger from the oil production and drilling technologies.

The growing need to protect our fragile marine ecosystems is becoming more and more important day by day.

The details of the study have been published in the journal Science Advances.

Photo: Guilherme Jofili | Flickr