New research has found a type of coral reef called Octocorals, previously thought to have diminished off the East Coast of the US in the Gulf of Maine, has been recently discovered surviving in dense coral garden communities in more than one location. The paper ‘Octocoral gardens in the Gulf of Maine (NW Atlantic), by Peter Auster et al, published in Biodiversity, studied Octocorals, a type of fragile deep-sea coral reef that grow and reproduce at very slow rates. 
Photo credit: NOAA
Octocorals used to be a common part of seafloor fauna in the Gulf of Maine. However, based on past accounts of where corals had been found, it had appeared that a century of fishing with bottom contact gear had reduced their distribution to just a small habitable area. Read more here!
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