Oh. Look at that. That is quite an impressive mound.
I've never seen anything like this.
This is honestly one of the largest aggregate of thickets of Lophelia that I've seen of this size.
Because the colonies themselves are relatively dense, and then you have so many of them, all next to each other.
And one thing I think we can talk about a little bit is how the live coral is actually white in this type of environment.
So these are actually live and healthy. Yeah.
This is...I mean, I'm almost, I'm not speechless, obviously, because I keep talking, but this is, for me, really, really exciting.
Previously to the Okeanos coming out here and mapping more of this flat part of the Blake Plateau,
this was all kind of originally thought to be soft sediment, but these mound features that were just mapped last year really do shed light on how prolific these cold water coral communities are.
It's like the coral highway. And we're gonna follow it. That's where we're gonna go.
This is how I want to spend every Monday. That's right.