Roatan's Deep-Sea Corals [4:3]
Deep-sea corals have been called 'the trees of the seas', because the colonies are large and upright, and they provide habitat to many other invertebrate species.
This video from the Idabel submersible helps to illustrate the diversity of corals from 400 to 700 meters deep (1200-2000 feet) adjacent to Roatan Marine Park in the Bay Islands, Honduras along the Meso-American Barrier Reef. The corals are black corals, (Antipatharia), sea fans (Alcyonaria), and hard corals (Scleractinia), in order of appearance. A squid and a smalltooth tiger shark appear, and many large sponges are observed.
The footage is edited by Maria Montoreano, and provided thanks to generous contributions from Roatan Institute for Dive Exploration, Harte Research Institute, NOAA, and Schmidt Ocean Institute.