Deep-Sea Coral Reefs Found Surviving in Ireland at The Edge of a Submarine Canyon - ScienceAlert

In fact, more than half of the 5,100 species on the planet exist as "cold-water corals" in deep and dark parts of the world's oceans.

Over time, in some cases millions of years, cold-water corals can grow to eventually form huge skyscraper-sized structures on the seabed called "coral mounds".

I have been studying the cold-water coral habitats off the coast of Ireland for a number of years, and have found these mounds of fossilised coral and sediment are incredibly varied.

Some are completely covered with live coral while others have lots of dead coral on the surface, and the mounds themselves have very different shapes and sizes.

It's still unclear exactly how these huge mounds of coral deep below the surface of the ocean will respond to these changing conditions, especially since coral lives on such long time scales.

Yet despite their slow-growing nature, colleagues and I have previously found these mounds have exhibited changes over just four years, with increased amounts of coral rubble and significant decreases in the coverage of a particular coral species.