French researchers say they have discovered one of the world’s largest healthy coral reefs, possibly paving the way for similar discoveries in locations that have not yet been explored, the Paris-based UNESCO agency announced Thursday.

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       Discovered off the coast of Tahiti, an island in the Pacific Ocean that’s attached to France, the reef has been explored since late last year and is estimated to be almost two miles long. Expedition project 1Ocean, which was involved in the exploration, said the reef’s state of conservation is “unrivaled” at a time when global warming, pollution and overfishing are threatening corals’ survival.

       Photos released by the team showed a seabed covered with rose-shaped corals — some of them more than six feet in diameter.

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       Whereas many of the world’s explored tropical reefs are found in relatively shallow water, the Tahiti corals stunned the exploration team because they live far deeper, in areas that remain largely unexplored.

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       “The fact that we are finding a very healthy and pristine coral reef at depths of 30 to 70 meters (98 to 230 feet) is quite unusual,” said UNESCO marine policy official Julian Barbière, adding that the discovery may have implications that go beyond Tahiti.

       “There could be all those reefs out there that have not been mapped or studied,” he said.

       Only 20 percent of the world’s seabed has been mapped in high resolution, he said, and UNESCO has supported efforts to study the unexplored parts.

       “To date, we know the surface of the moon better than the deep ocean,” UNESCO Director General Audrey Azoulay said in a release. The U.N. agency wants to support a series of ocean expeditions over the course of this decade.

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       The expedition that led to the exploration of the Tahiti reef was headed by a team of explorers that included photographer Alexis Rosenfeld and France’s CNRS-CRIOBE (an organization linked to the French National Center for Scientific Research). UNESCO supported the mission.

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       Barbière said the discovery could yield important lessons on how to protect coral reefs, as global warming is driving a rise in the number of havoc-wreaking bleaching events.

       In 2019, coral reefs off Tahiti went through a dramatic bleaching episode, with researchers estimating that up to two-thirds of corals were impacted within days. Corals in shallow water were hit particularly hard.

       But during their expedition last year, the French team found no major evidence of destruction at the deeper reef that had not been explored up until that point.

       While corals that are found at greater depth may be less vulnerable to global warming, a lack of sunlight poses different challenges there.

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       UNESCO official Barbière said one of the key questions going forward will be to understand not only how the Tahiti reef is “in such good condition” but also “how such coral reefs can grow in this twilight zone of the ocean.”

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