Off the coast of Alabama, divers discovered a primeval forest sixty feet under the sea. This forest of cypress trees was buried under ocean sediments, and protected in an oxygen-depleted environment, for more than 50,000 years, but was apparently unearthed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
The delight of the animals is such that there is no nook that is not inhabited by hundreds of fish, clams, crabs, anemones, snakes… Each tree has become a reef where there was nothing before. And the trunks are so well preserved that if you cut a piece you can still smell the cypress of the aantiquity. However, due to all these animals, the underwater landscape has only a few years of existence left.
Ben Raines, one of those who explored the area, noted for Our AmazingPlanet: “Swimming around these logs and logs feels like you are in a fairy world.”
The exact location is a secret shared by only a handful of people – a dendrochronologist, a geographer, a fisherman and two divers – for the obvious reasons of its study and preservation.
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