Surprising, Vibrant Reef Discovered in the Muddy Amazon | Hacker News Reader

Surprising, Vibrant Reef Discovered in the Muddy Amazon

news.nationalgeographic.com

Most reefs rely on photosynthesis via a symbiotic relationship with cyanobacteria to get energy, but the water here is too cloudy. Instead many of the sponges in this reef rely on a symbiotic relationship with chemosynthetic microbes. Pretty cool!

This makes me realize how lucky we are that the ocean is as relatively transparent as it is, such that we can witness the beauty of ocean reefs. We might never find a way to really see how amazing this reef is. We can map it, explore it, and probably eventually render really amazing recreations of what it would look like in clear water, but we'll never see it.

I just like that they exist in places like this. Reefs are anchors for the marine eco-system. They crop up in unlikely places, and support vibrant life. Even if we can't see it, knowing that it's out there suggests life taking hold in more places. (I feel similar when I read about life around underwater thermals)

Think about how much luckier we are that air is transparent!

The air is transparent because those are the wavelengths we (as air creatures) evolved to see. If it wasn't, we would have evolved sight in wavelengths (or media) that was transparent: ie: sonar, x-rays.

That's debateable. We may simply have evolved without photon sensors.

Other wavelengths may have issues with detection or the information provided; if something can cut through obstructions in the atmosphere it may be hard to grow cells which interact with it or the rays may also ignore whatever is present locally at most scales.

The eye might be reduced in detail to the same domain as hearing or smell.

Just to nitpick sonar is really complex hearing not sight.

I suspect it is not possible to evolve to detect X-Rays given the basic building blocks life has to work with, but yes your general idea is right. Vision has evolved independently at least half a dozen times because of this selection pressure.

Actually our eyes evolved to see underwater. There just happened not to be that much different between clear air and clear water.

Been reading Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, it mentions corals at the mouth of the Amazon.

Sparsely populated reef discovered in the Southwestern Atlantic Ocean, spanning a large area that includes the amazon delta.

"At least 35 sections of the continental shelf were acquired by Brazilian or transnational companies for oil exploration, up to 20 of which may soon be producing oil near the reefs."

Sigh.

Uninformative news. What is a section? What percentage of the reef area are them? How near?

I forget who said it (Neil Tyson?), but something along the lines of: "If you hear a statistic, change the order of magnitude. Does that change how you feel about the fact? If not, the statistic is probably bullshit."

The dangers to the environment are there with any well, but it's not just Brazil that is endangering the Amazon, far upstream, in Iquitos, Peru, there are also several oil fields that are already being exploited. And (sometimes pretty violent) protests there are not because of environmental concerns but because foreign companies got the drilling rights, leaving many locals in fear they won't profit from the oil (which I get - it's a really poor area).

And I don't think environmental concerns count much in Brazil either, the economy has been in a long recession and lots of people are unemployed. Last month I did the trip from Belem (Atlantic coast), via Manaus, to Colombia on a slow boat used by locals: At least half the 500 or so passengers where going back to their villages in the jungle because in the big cities they cannot not find work anymore.

here is the paper http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/4/e1501252

Sparsely populated with beautiful yellow rectangles.

Just to be clear, this is as much in the Amazon as the Gulf of Mexico is on the Mississippi

It is on the sea, close to its end, but not on the river itself

But OMG, the reef is already threatened.

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