Graphic: The Guardian

A 3,600 sq mile (9,300 sq km) coral reef has been discovered off the mouth of the Amazon River. Stretching for over 600 miles, from French Guiana to Brazil’s Maranhão state, the reef is in water from 160 to over 320 feet deep.  Scientists say that the massive reef is unlike any other known on Earth.  Unfortunately, the newly discovered and unique reef is also in the path of where energy giants BP and Total plan to drill for oil. 

Smithsonian reports: The reef is so odd, in fact, that its discoverers believe it may constitute an entirely new type of ecological community.  

“This is something totally new and different from what is present in any other part of the globe,” says Fabiano Thompson, an oceanographer at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. “But until now, it’s been almost completely overlooked.”  

The mouth of one of the world’s largest rivers is an unlikely place for a coral reef. The Amazon accounts for a whopping 20 percent of the world’s river-to-ocean discharge, and the tremendous muddy plume it produces in the Atlantic can be seen from space. “You wouldn’t expect to have gigantic reefs there, because the water is full of sediment and there’s nearly no light or oxygen,” Thompson says.

The reef, so recently discovered is in serious danger. BP and Total are planning to drill for oil near the recently discovered coral reef off the coast of Brazil. Together they own five deepwater exploration licences in the Foz do Amazonas (Mouth of the Amazon River) basin and are expected to be granted permits to begin exploratory drilling early this year – once their environmental impact assessments are approved by the Brazilian government. The nearest of these blocks is just 8 km from the reef.  

Scientists are very concerned that the drilling could seriously impact the little understood and newly discovered reef.