"Efforts are under way to designate site of submerged forest off the Alabama coast a marine sanctuary"

"When divers jump into a particular stretch of water off the coast of Alabama, they travel back to a time before humans arrived in the new world.

Submerged below the waters are the remains of a cypress tree forest that grew 60,000 years ago, but was inundated by the Gulf of Mexico and preserved from decomposition beneath sediment. Nothing like Alabama’s underwater forest, in terms of age or scale, has ever been found.

Now efforts are underway to protect the expanse of tree stumps from exploitation by designating the site a marine sanctuary – some firms have sought to salvage the wood for commercial use – and to see if the underwater forest harbors new compounds for medicine."

Paola Rosa-Aquino reports for the Guardian January 20, 2021. [2]