Although discovered in an expedition in the year of 2012, this huge coral reef would be known publicly known until its publication in the journal Science Advances. The trip’s main goals was to figure out how the plume in the Amazon -The place where salt water mixes with fresh water, affects the way the ocean absorbs carbon dioxide.

Rodrigo Moura, reef ecologist, thought that the team could find fish that would normally be found near reef systems. He found this in a paper from 1977 and the team decided to follow his idea. What turns out to be amazing was that they found around 73 different types of fish, sponges and echinoderms that belong in a coral reef. Unfortunately, the river’s naturally muddy waters and currents made it impossible for the Researchers to dive down and explore the reef they suspect is lying between 164 and 329 feet (50 and 100m) below and covering possibly 5,900 mi² (15,280.93 km²). They used a sonar to explore areas they wanted to investigate thoroughly and surfaced samples of the river/ocean floor.

"We brought up the most amazing and colorful animals I had ever seen on an expedition," said Yager to the University of Georgia. This discovery will help for the further understanding of how reef colonies and creatures that depend on such colonies work and affect their environment in their own, unique way. It will shed even more light given the fact that they “...Found a reef where the textbooks said there shouldn’t be one,” as Fabiano Thompson said to National Geographic. Coral reefs need exposure to light and oxygen in order to thrive and that’s why it’s impressive to think about a reef that large with practically zero subjection to light and low oxygen level waters.

It may seem impossible but Moura and company proved it wrong, or, at the very least possible and it’s ever the more sad to hear that it could also be endangered from industrial oil exploration, because the Brazilian government has sold a great portion of the land to companies for oil exploration. So soon it was discovered and so terrifying it would be to hear it gone too, we would find it particularly bad since another amazing coral reef is being almost completely eradicated in the coast of Australia, where the Great Barrier Reef has almost been bleached out by the acidification of its waters due to human activities.

93% of this coral reef that encompasses a total area of 132,974 mi², is bleached and it has been estimated that around 50% is dead or already dying due to a number of different pollutants, most of which 90% comes from sugar cane and cattle farm runoffs that seriously endanger this World Heritage site as declared by the UNESCO. Certainly much more than tourism will be lost, a whole world of natural beauty and thriving species, thousands of them, that depend on the coral reef and many of these species are endangered or endemic to the reef making the loss forever irrecuperable.