Ancient forest lies 10 miles off the Alabama coast (video, gallery) (al.com)

Published: Sunday, September 02, 2012, 5:34 AM
By Ben Raines, Press-Register

Sixty feet beneath the green waves of the Gulf of Mexico, ten miles from the nearest land, stands an ancient forest of giant trees.

Covered in dense carpets of sea anemones, crawling with spidery arrow crabs and toadfish, the sprawling stumps of massive cypress trees spread across the seafloor.

Unmistakable to eyes that have seen the cypress growing today in the swamps of the Gulf Coast, the trunks bear the jagged, craggy outline that is the hallmark of the species. Away from each stump lies another clue, a telltale ring of cypress knees, the knobby wood outgrowths believed to help the trees survive in the soupy mud of the south’s river deltas.

The trees run along a small drop off along the Gulf’s bottom south of the Fort Morgan peninsula. For hundreds of yards, the stumps follow the lazy meanders of what appears to be an ancient river channel that runs to the north, toward the modern day Mobile-Tensaw Delta, which drains Alabama and portions of Tennessee, Georgia and Mississippi.

Drifting along the river channel, floating over the edge of a sunken forest rendered in the blues and greens of the deep sea is enchanting.



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more: http://blog.al.com/live/2012/09/ancient_forest_lies_10_miles_o.html




Please pardon the hyperbolic title seen in the video ...