Alabama's 60,000-year-old underwater forest spills its secrets in new documentary (al.com)

[eppur_se_muova]

Ben Raines | [e-mail]

The ancient cypress forest found 60 feet underwater in the Gulf of Mexico, due south of Gulf Shores, Ala., is about 60,000 years old, says a team of scientists who have studied the site.

The forest appears to be a wholly unique relic of our planet’s past, the only known site where a coastal ice age forest this old has been preserved in place, with thousands of trees still rooted in the dirt they were growing millennia ago. It is considered a treasure trove of information, providing new insights into everything from climate in the region to annual rainfall, insect populations, and the types of plants that inhabited the Gulf Coast before humans arrived in the new world. Scientific analysis of the site is ongoing. One of the key things the forest might hint at is a world where the seas rose even more quickly than the worst-case predictions for the near future.

The work of the team investigating the site is detailed in the new documentary, The Underwater Forest, co-produced by This is Alabama and the Alabama Coastal Foundation. You can watch the film above, on Youtube, or on This is Alabama's Roku and Apple TV apps. It will be broadcast on Alabama Public Television at 6 p.m. July 23rd and 9 p.m. July 24th. The film was written and directed by this writer, AL.com’s Ben Raines, who also filmed the underwater sequences and organized the first scientific missions to the site. It was narrated by Ian Thompson-Yates.

By Ben Raines | [e-mail]

The scientists believe the forest was buried beneath the Gulf sediments for eons, until giant waves driven by Hurricane Ivan in 2004 uncovered it. Before it made landfall, Ivan raged through the Gulf as a Category 5 hurricane. Its winds pushed the largest waves ever measured, which were 98 feet tall when they passed over a cluster of government data buoys far offshore. Those buoys, seen in the image above, were ultimately ripped loose from their moorings by the storm. The green dots indicate the path of the storm, which passed directly over the spot where the forest was discovered.

AL.com collected the first samples from the site, and has participated in every scientific mission to the site, beginning in 2012. Our crews subsequently visited the laboratories at Louisiana State University and the University of Southern Mississippi where samples from the forest have been analyzed.
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more: http://www.al.com/news/mobile/index.ssf/2017/06/underwater_forest_discovered_alabama.html#incart_big-photo

[Warpy]

1. I am deeply grateful that 60,000 year old guitars and coffee tables

will not be available until science has learned everything it can from this place.

[FailureToCommunicate]

2. We use old growth (recycled) cypress wood for greenhouse construction. Lasts nearly

forever. Grows in swamps and is pretty rot proof.

[Warpy]

3. Yes, but not a 60,000 year old growth forest

which will educate climatologists, botanists, paleontologists, and other scientists for many years if we can keep it from being looted by oafs who want to make a financial killing providing toys to the rich.

[FailureToCommunicate]

4. Yes, of course. I totally agree. The reason we have to use recycled cypress is because the greedy

profiteers in the past pretty much cut down most of the old growth cypress forests along the gulf coast.

Glad to hear that these ancients will be studied and protected.

[Judi Lynn]

5. Hope the greedy slimes will never find out where the forest is, it's not theirs to take.

The human race has a lot of learning and growing to do long before it becomes civilized.

Seizing and plundering are not natural to everyone.

Thank you for this unusual video. So glad to know what was there around 50,000 or more years ago.