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A new species of black coral has been identified in the Pacific, including in an area south of Hawaii that’s being considered for deep-sea mining,

The study by researchers at Shirshov Institute of Oceanology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Smithsonian Institution and Conservation International analyzed coral samples at several museums worldwide, including the Bernice P. Bishop Museum in Honolulu.

The researchers concluded that a species had previously been mischaracterized as another type of coral but was in fact its own separate species. They named it B. pseudoalternata.

It was identified among samples from not only the Pacific — including the waters surrounding Hawaii — but also in the Atlantic and Indian oceans.

That’s unusually widespread for a deep-sea coral species, said Michelle Taylor, a deep-sea marine ecologist and senior lecturer at the School of Life Sciences at the University of Essex.

Taylor said the analysis was impressive for its ability to find a species that was “hidden in plain sight.”

Anthony Montgomery, a marine biologist at the U.S. Pacific Islands Fish and Wildlife Office, noted another study released this week estimated that there are 22 million species on Earth, with many still unidentified.

“These kinds of studies are really important to highlight the biodiversity out there and underpin the fact that we have a lot more to learn and discover,” he said.

Alex David Rogers, a visiting professor at the University of Oxford and science director at the environmental nonprofit REV Ocean, said the study on the new black coral underscores “just how poor our knowledge of the distribution of life in the ocean actually is.”

“I can pretty much guarantee that if I go to parts of the Pacific or the Indian Ocean we will recover many, many new species,” Rogers said.

Rogers said the Pacific and Indian oceans are particularly understudied compared with the Atlantic Ocean where researchers have done more sampling. Not all of the understudied creatures are small.

“We’re talking about sponges the size of armchairs,” he said.

Research that identifies new coral species is challenging in part because of a lack of taxonomists and the costs, equipment and resources needed to actually collect deep-sea samples, Montgomery said.

He said there’s a need to inspire more people to become taxonomists to help meet the need for more species identification.

“How many species are we actually losing before we know they exist?” Montgomery asked, adding the answer is still unknown.

Daniel Wagner, a co-author on the study who works with Conservation International, said he and his fellow co-authors aren’t sure how old the new species that they identified is but noted that it’s not unusual for coral to be extremely aged.

Regulations to govern deep-sea mining activities are still being formulated, but some governments in the Pacific are considering supporting the industry due to its economic benefits.

Wagner said he’s concerned about how mining could disturb coral and other species that may not recover.

Many of the corals were collected from an area between Hawaii and the Marianas archipelago in the northern Pacific known as the prime crust zone, which has some of the largest deposits of commercially valuable cobalt crusts, Wagner said.

The prime crust zone includes “some of the oldest seafloor in the Pacific and consequently this area may have some of the thickest, most valuable crusts,” according to an analysis published by the 

The International Seabed Authority is for deep-sea mining.

Rogers from REV Ocean thinks it’s a bad idea.

“Black corals are very slow growing and long lived and are therefore likely to be highly vulnerable to disturbance from activities like deep-sea mining for cobalt crusts,” he said.

Wagner agrees.

“These areas that are going to be mined include some very fragile and vulnerable communities and ecosystems, including these corals that are hundreds if not thousands of years old,” he said.

Taylor from the University of Essex said it can be difficult for academics to find the time to identify new species because it’s challenging work, but said doing so is a necessary building block for understanding diversity in our oceans.

She said the corals might create biocompounds that are beneficial to humans and also compared the value of deep sea coral to the redwoods.

“It’s the equivalent of asking, what are the redwoods doing for us?” she said. “It’s worthy just because it’s such a beautiful and incredibly rare thing.”

Civil Beat’s coverage of climate change is supported by the Environmental Funders Group of the Hawaii Community Foundation, Marisla Fund of the Hawaii Community Foundation and the Frost Family Foundation.