Amazon Reef

About

The Amazon Reef, or Amazonian Reef, is an extensive coral and sponge reef system, located in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of French Guiana and northern Brazil. It is one of the largest known reef systems in the world, with scientists estimating its length at over 1,000 kilometres (600 miles), and its area as over 9,300 km2 (3,600 mi2). Publication of its discovery was released in April 2016, following an oceanographic study of the region in 2012. Evidence of a large structure near the delta of the Amazon River dated from as early as the 1950s.

In the 1970s, the biologist Rodrigo Moura completed a study on fishing on the continental shelf and wanted to expand his research by locating the reefs where he caught the fish. When Moura located the fish he caught around the Amazon Reef and in the mouth of the Amazon River, he saw this as an indication that there must be biodiversity underneath, as the fish was indicated to be a coral reef fish. A few decades later a group of students from the University of Georgia noted that Moura's article did not contain GPS coordinates and used Moura's sound waves and sea floor samples to locate the reef. Once they believed they had located the reef they dredged the bottom to confirm that this was its location. The process of finding the reef took about three years before an official announcement was made about its discovery. The Amazon River is home to about 20 percent of the world's fresh water supply, placing the Amazon Reef at the mouth of the largest river in the world, where every day one fifth of the world's water flows into the ocean from the Amazon River. Because of this, the Amazon Reef is less biologically diverse compared to other reefs of its kind.

The reef system has been identified as a coral and sponge reef. Scientists estimated the reef's size to be 9,300 km2 (3,600 mi2) in area, and over 970 km (600 mi) in length, making it one of the largest reef systems in the world, comparable to the size of the island of Cyprus. Another estimate also puts the general ecoregion encompassing the reef to be as large as 14,000 km2 (5,592 mi2). The reef's area extends as far as 120 km (75 mi) offshore, and is estimated to lie in waters ranging from 30 to 120 metres (100 to 400 feet) deep. The reef's existence is unusual, as reef systems do not often exist in the mouths of larger rivers like the Amazon, due to the low salinity and high acidity, in addition to the continuous rain of sediments. Before the reef's discovery, it was originally believed that the Amazon, with its sediment-rich plume, represented a significant gap in reef distribution across the Western Atlantic, correlating with the accepted view that corals thrived in clear waters along tropical shelves. The reef primarily owes its existence to its depth, as it is below the freshwater layer of discharge from the Amazon into the Atlantic Ocean, a discharge that represents one fifth of the outflow into the Earth's oceans. The majority of the reef is made up of beds of rhodolith, various species of red algae, which superficially resemble coral. While it has been described as "impoverished", and "not having the biodiversity of some of the more prominent coral reefs of the world", 61 species of sponge and 73 species of fish, in addition to various coral and starfish species, have so far been identified as inhabiting the reef, including staghorn corals, and spiny lobsters. Pockets of coral species, discovered as early as 1999, were found to be similar to those found in the Caribbean Sea, hinting at the possibility that Caribbean corals dispersed to the Amazon Reef. Marine biologists have also entertained the idea that the reef serves as a stepping stone to facilitate dispersal of species from reefs in southern Brazil northwards to the Caribbean. The biology of the reef is mostly dictated by the discharge of the Amazon into the Atlantic. Northern sections of the reef are often shrouded in the shadow of the sediment layer above for half a year on average, producing an environment similar to a "shadow zone". These northern areas are populated with sponges and carnivorous species such as hydroids. Southern sections of the reef, which are covered by the Amazon's plume only three months a year on average, are more populated with diverse coral-centric life, where photosynthesis can occur. It is believed that single-celled organisms are central to the reef's ecosystem, providing the main source of nutrients to sponges, corals and other inhabitants. Fabiano Thompson, along with other researchers on the reef, describe the system as a new class of biome.

Adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA). Photography via Wikimedia Commons.