Spotting soft coral garden off Newfoundland 'once in a lifetime' opportunity, researcher says

Off the coast of Newfoundland this past summer, Marine Institute researchers spotted a rare underwater site that came in a kaleidoscope of colours like pink, blues, purples and orange.

While sailing past the Funk Island Deep marine refuge in June a group aboard the MV Polar Prince came across a soft coral garden, which is a collection of fleshy corals densely packed on the seabed.

"I think this might be a once in a lifetime, you know, opportunity for someone like me to come across a habitat like this. And it was a real privilege to share it with everybody on board," said Emmeline Broad, a PhD candidate at the Marine Institute's School of Ocean Technology in St. John's. 

To be called a coral garden, Broad said the corals need to be gathered close together.

In this case, there are at least two species of corals present, although she said they aren't sure exactly what types of are there. They have spotted other marine species like crabs and anthropods, as well as fish, around the coral.

She added soft coral gardens are not common across the North Atlantic and don't usually appear in such density like what was found around the Funk Island Deep, said Broad.

"Honestly, I've never seen such densities as soft corals in the North Atlantic. And I've been working with seabed imagery for a number of years now," she said.

So much coral, sea floor not visible

For comparison, Broad said, a soft coral garden was recently found near Greenland but it wasn't nearly as densely packed and was in deep water. She said the team estimates the area of the soft coral garden off Funk Island Deep is around 10,000 square metres of the sea floor and is at intermediate depth.

"We actually can't see the seabed because they are so dense."

Broad said she used a device she helped develop in-house that they call BathyCam, which uses a powerful camera that can capture views at 6,000 metres in depth. Developed by local company SubC Imaging, the camera can view the soft coral garden in a way never before seen.

She was on board the Polar Prince, which was sailing as part of a marine conservation areas project, made its way up to the Funk Island Deep

She said the Funk Island Deep area has a lot of currents, which means the cameras and small RV wouldn't be able to get below the water surface. Broad said the BathyCam is larger so they decided to try it, which was how she was able to spot the soft coral garden.

"We put it down again and lo behold, we see this density that is just completely unique and I've never seen before."

Robyn Whelan, a fisheries technologist with the Marine Institute's Centre for Fisheries Ecosystems Research, was on board when the image of the soft coral garden came into view.

"I think all of us cried. We were all pretty stunned. We weren't expecting it," said Whelan.

Initially, what the camera showed was just a flat and bare peak with some seaweed. Then, a second camera went down the peak's side and, she said, the view "exploded."

"There was just marine life everywhere, like marine life on top of marine life," Whelan said. 

"So it was pretty incredible. We were all very ecstatic, very shocked but very happy."

WATCH | A kaleidoscope of colours within an ocean garden:

See the stunning ‘once in a lifetime’ underwater coral garden — off the coast of N.L.

3 months ago

Duration 1:19

It looks like something found in more tropical waters, but the 10,000-square-metre soft coral garden seen off the Funk Island deep marine refuge is quite special, says Emmeline Broad, who was on board the ship that came across it.

She said the journey to find the soft coral garden started on a separate voyage in 2023, when acoustic data picked up an unusual peak on the sea floor. Whelan recalled that it intrigued project manager Tasha Harrold, who said they needed to get a camera down there on another trip.

"Ever since then — back in 2023 — she's kind of been, like, pretty adamant about like, 'We need to get back to the spot and put a camera down there because it's a very interesting area,'" said Whelan.

Next steps

Broad said the marine conservation areas project has received funding from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to go back to the site and collect more images.

"But first of all, we need to map the area because we don't have very high-resolution maps of the seabed. And we believe the seabed here is the key to finding where this soft coral garden extends to," she said.

A team went back to the site recently to carry out multi-beam acoustic mapping to better understand the complexity of the Funk Island Deep seabed.

"It's really important to kind of map this area and to determine specific depths. That way we have a little bit more control when we do our surveys," said Whelan, who was on the team.

She said the information gathered will help them when they head back later this month.

Download our free CBC News app to sign up for push alerts for CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. Click here to visit our landing page.