World's largest deep-sea coral reef found lurking beneath the Gulf Stream 'right on the doorstep' of US coast

A red fish swims in front of white corals in the deep sea.

The world's largest deep-sea coral reef, which spans an area roughly the size of Vermont, has been uncovered "right on the doorstep" of the southeast U.S. coastline, new seafloor maps reveal. The dark-dwelling, ghostly corals likely support a wide variety of marine creatures that we didn't know were there, researchers say.

In a new study, published Jan. 12 in the journal Geomatics, scientists collated data from 31 multibeam sonar mapping surveys and 23 submersible dives to build a map of the Blake Plateau — a massive sloping shelf located around 100 miles (160 kilometers) off the U.S. coastline between North Carolina and Florida.