Scientists Mapping The Great Barrier Reef Surprised By 500-Meter Coral Reef – That's Taller Than The Empire State Building

It’s funny how nature can conceal giants for a surprising amount of time. We humans are constantly searching for things, so how is it that Australia didn’t find its heaviest insect (a stick insect that’s really more of a log insect) until just this year? You might also be surprised to learn that it wasn’t until 2020 that they discovered their first new reef in 120 years, one that just happened to be taller than the Empire State Building.

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Yes, this was the story that unfolded in the waters surrounding the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) in Australia. The reef is made up of almost 3,000 individual reefs and gained its first extra member in over a century back in 2020.

It was happy news as the coral appeared to be in good health, despite most of the GBR having been devastated by a series of mass bleaching events. On top of that, it was also absolutely eye-wateringly enormous.

The coral reef was discovered by a team with the Schmidt Ocean Institute who were conducting underwater mapping of the northern GBR seafloor. The team were then able to dive down and explore the reef with the help of their remote operated vehicle, SuBastian (who recently discovered Barbie lobsters and sea pigs in a previously unexplored offshore canyon).

Mapping revealed the detached reef to be over 500 meters (1,640 feet) tall, making it taller than the Empire State Building, the Sydney Tower, and the Petronas Twin Towers. At its base, the reef is 1.5 kilometers (0.9 miles) long, but quite narrow. From there it rises 500 meters to support a small reef 300 meters (984 feet) long and only 15 meters (49 feet) wide lying just 40 meters (130 feet) below the surface. An ocean giant hiding just out of sight.

“To find a new half-a-kilometer tall reef in the offshore Cape York area of the well-recognized Great Barrier Reef shows how mysterious the world is just beyond our coastline,” said Dr Jyotika Virmani, executive director of Schmidt Ocean Institute, in a release. “This powerful combination of mapping data and underwater imagery will be used to understand this new reef and its role within the incredible Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area.” 

Dr Robin Beaman of James Cook University told IFLScience the reef supports all the main ingredients of a thriving tropical reef, with “hard corals, soft corals, fish, and sharks.” So many sharks, in fact, that team member Mardi McNeil of Queensland University of Technology referred to a “blizzard of fish and sharks.” The staggering biodiversity is a contrast to the shallow water reefs nearby in the GBR's northern zone, most of which have been hit hard by mass bleaching event.

The discovery of the new, skyscraper-sized reef brought the total number of detached reefs in the area to eight, reefs we’ve been mapping since the late 1800s. Other reefs like it include the Raine Island reef, which is the world’s most important green sea turtle nesting area.

“This unexpected discovery affirms that we continue to find unknown structures and new species in our Ocean,” added Wendy Schmidt, co-founder of Schmidt Ocean Institute. “The state of our knowledge about what’s in the Ocean has long been so limited. Thanks to new technologies that work as our eyes, ears and hands in the deep ocean, we have the capacity to explore like never before. New oceanscapes are opening to us, revealing the ecosystems and diverse life forms that share the planet with us.”