Rare view of underwater forest preserved since Ice Age
An ancient underwater forest found south of Alabama’s Gulf Shores in the Gulf of Mexico could provide a time capsule to a pre-human era on Earth.
The cypress forest dates back to an Ice Age more than 60,000 years ago when sea levels were 400 feet lower than today, according to the new documentary “The Underwater Forest,” made by an environmental reporter and filmmaker Ben Raines. Raines first went in search of the site after he was tipped off by a savvy local source, he explained in a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” forum.
“I first learned of the Underwater Forest from a dive shop owner in Alabama,” Raines said. “He discovered the forest about a year after Hurricane Ivan, when a fisherman came into the dive shop and said, ‘I’ve found this spot that’s just loaded with fish but there’s barely anything in terms of structure that shows up on my depth finder. Why don’t you go out there and take a look?'”
It took years, but Raines finally convinced the shop owner to show him the exact site, he said. He wrote a story about the discovery, and immediately received a call from paleoclimatologist Kristine DeLong of Louisiana State University asking if she could carbon date some samples from the site.
With that, Raines and DeLong formed a partnership to extract as much knowledge from the site as possible while also preserving its natural wonders — the story of which is told in the film.
The first scientific expedition to the site happened in 2012, and DeLong continues leading a team of scientists studying its secrets. Unique conditions have sealed the forest in a sort of “underwater time capsule,” the team said.
It’s believed to be the world’s only preserved coastal Ice Age forest, long hidden beneath the sea.
Cypress trees should decompose on a 10,000-year time scale — suggesting that, at this particular site, the cypress has survived much longer thanks to low-oxygen sediments that bar bacteria from decomposing the wood, DeLong explained on Reddit.
In analyzing the site, DeLong’s team of dendrochronologists (specialists in tree-ring dating), geologists and paleontologists are collecting rare information on Ice Age-era climate, rainfall, insects, and plants, building new insights into what Earth looked like before humans inhabited it.
Read more at CBS News