The ‘Yellowstone of the Atlantic Ocean’ could become the first underwater national monument on the East Coast

The Atlantic Canyons and Seamounts is an underwater ecological hotspot about 150 miles off the coast of Cape Cod. It’s a thriving, incredibly diverse biological ecosystem, where hundreds of species of fish and invertebrates swarm over underwater mountains called seamounts. Several canyons there plunge into black depths teeming with a broad array of life, including colorful species of deep water corals, some of which grow over ten feet tall and are known to live for over a thousand years. It’s also been the site of exciting recent scientific discovery: an number of species believed to be new to science were found on a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration expedition in 2013.