“Few people realize that the Gulf of Maine is home to many beautiful deep-sea corals, about which we know so little,” Dave Packer, a marine ecologist at the NEFSC’s Howard Laboratory in Sandy Hook, N.J., and co-chief scientist on the cruise, said in a statement from the NOAA Fisheries Service.

“Off the Northeast U.S., the very deep submarine canyons and seamounts far out along the edge of the continental shelf exhibit a high biodiversity of deep-sea corals, some of which may be hundreds if not thousands of years old,” Packer said. “Seeing high densities of several of these species in relatively shallow waters close to shore is amazing. The hanging gardens were spectacular!”

The team began work in the western Jordan Basin and the Schoodic Ridges region a year ago, collecting real-time color video and digital still images with the ISIS 2 towed camera platform.

Fishermen have known about the presence of corals in the gulf for more than a century, as coral specimens were captured in their gear along with the fishes they harvested. What remains unknown is the ecological setting in which these fragile and vulnerable species occur and the limits of their distribution.