Using side-scan sonar to produce a 3-D map of the seabed, researchers found previously unknown reefs featuring pilqueta (above) and other corals between 60 and 220 feet (20 and 73 meters) deep off the southern coast of Bahia, Brazil.

"The newly discovered reefs are teeming with life, in some places harboring 30 times the density of marine life than the known, shallower reefs," Guilherme Dutra, a marine program director for Conservation International Brazil, said in a press statement in early July 2008.

Only a fraction of the Abrolhos Bank marine habitats are currently protected.

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