The Underwater Forest is an ancient relic from the Gulf Coast’s past. Pictured here is the river that once ran between the forest, now buried beneath miles of water.

Courtesy of Ben Raines

Ben Raines has covered environmental issues and natural wonders in Alabama for over 20 years, and wrote, directed, and filmed most of the Underwater Forest documentary.

Courtesy of Ben Raines

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GULF SHORES - Alabama is truly a unique place, especially when it comes to our wildlife and nature. Few understand that as much as Ben Raines, an investigative reporter for AL.com, who has spent over 20 years reporting on and studying Alabama’s wilds. Raines recently spoke of his discoveries at the Third Annual Distinguished Lecture Series, put on by the University of South Alabama’s Gulf Coast Campus.

“Most people don’t realize that we are in one of the most diverse spots on earth in terms of the number of species” Raines said.

According to Raines, in Alabama there are more species of freshwater fish than any other state, more animals and plants species per square mile than any other state, and the greatest diversity of carnivorous plants in the nation. All this is because of the Mobile River Basin, which is one of the most diverse river basins in the entire world. And because Alabama never froze during the ice age.

“When the rest of the country was covered in this mile-thick sheet of ice, it was still warm down here,” Raines said. “Colder than it is today, and it would snow here, but it never froze. So all the animals and plants that ever evolved here, ever appeared here, are pretty much still here.”

But how do Raines and scientists know so much about Alabama’s past? One of the largest discoveries in Alabama’s history has helped in understanding what the world was like here thousands of years ago: The Underwater Forest.

Hurricane Ivan devastated the Gulf Coast back in 2004, but it also played a hand in uncovering the forest, which is about 12 miles south of the shoreline. Its exact location remains unknown to the public. Back in 2004, a local dive shop owner made the discovery of the forest hidden beneath the waves, and decided to keep the location to himself from fear of individuals attempting to dig up the buried trees. Knowing Raines was an environmental reporter, the owner spoke to him about the forest. It wasn’t until 4 years later that Raines was taken to the location, and since then, the location has only been revealed to scientists who are busy learning the secrets of the Underwater Forest.

Raines said this about the forest’s location: “It is the old Mobile-Tensaw River Delta … That’s where the rivers used to come out, in fact that would have been way up in the swamp. The actual shoreline, like where we go to the beach today, would have been about 50 miles out, sea levels have gone up and down that much.”

Raines explained that in the past, all of Alabama was covered by an ocean, stating that whether climate change is because of humanity or not, it has happened before, multiple times. Here in the Gulf Coast, Raines states that the area has been anywhere from 400 feet above sea level to 100 feet below sea level throughout history.

The Underwater Forest comes from a long-past ice age, and is an ancient cypress forest located 60 feet below the gulf’s surface. Though scientists initially believed the forest would be around 10,000 years old, they were stunned to learn the forest was alive between 60-70,000 years ago, making it older than the last ice age.

It is the only known site where a forest from the ice age has been preserved, the trees on the ocean floor still grounded in the dirt that they were once growing in. Raines states that the trees are first rooted in the dirt, which is then covered by freshwater clay that was deposited by ancient rivers. Above that is marine clay, or an old sea floor, and finally on top lies sand. The trees have been spared from oxygen and thus from decomposition, and they are intact relics that offer scientists a peek into the past, allowing them to discover everything from how much carbon dioxide was in the atmosphere to what Alabama was like at the time the trees lived.

The answer: cold and snowy. Pollen samples that were taken from the trees revealed that the forest wasn’t like a modern Gulf Coast cypress forest. The forest of the past was dominated by cypress, oaks, and alders. To find this in today’s world, you would need to travel to the coast of Virginia. “So this forest was built for a much colder climate, which of course it was during an ice age, so that makes sense,” said Raines. This tells us that 60,000 years ago, it was snowing on the Gulf Coast, and the dunes now seen along the beaches and islands were once mountains, hundreds of feet above the sea.

Now under the waves, scientists believe the forest was once an island. Divers who have been down to the site state that you can see the impression of a large river winding through the trees, and fish, eels, turtles, and more now make homes within the old trunks. An entirely new ecosystem from the one the forest knew on land now inhabits the ancient site.

Scientists are almost positive there are even more forests of this kind hidden away in the ocean, waiting to be discovered.

“There has to be more forests out there, frozen in time,” said Raines. “When anything gets buried under six inches or more of sediment in the ocean, it’s protected from oxygen, so it never decomposes. You’d have to think there’s that stuff all over.”

Within the Underwater Forest, as Raines states there are many more trees currently buried from sight, hidden under the sand and old soil. Raines and his team are working on making the location a marine sanctuary, and they hope to make it open for fishing and scuba diving, but restrict anyone from taking the wood.

One of the largest puzzles that scientists are researching is how the forest became lost to the sea, if the change was gradual or sudden, and most pressing, what does this mean for the future?

There are a couple of different theories as to what happened to the forest years ago.

“It could have been some kind of massive storm that buried the forest suddenly, like a hurricane,” said Raines. “Things like artificial reefs, even nine feet tall, can be covered in a single storm because sand moves quickly. The other idea is that it got covered in a melting event, where floods came down and covered it all up suddenly as the seas rose. So glaciers melting, and they may have melted very suddenly.”

In the past, there were times when sea levels were changing 70-80 feet in 1,000 years. Which raises the question of if levels will continue to rise, and how much.

“The worst-case scenario we’ve heard from our current sea level rise is six feet,” Raines said. “Everybody says, ‘oh that’ll never happen.’ But it has happened. Sea levels have come up eight feet in 100 years. Not just once, but a lot of times. To me that was really a stunning moment, and I thought, ‘okay, it’s time to quit arguing about whether cars and factories are causing global warming and get ready,’ because it’s coming. This is graphic proof, here is a living ecosystem that was caught and just covered up, while the trees were growing. They just died and disappeared.”

Over the earth’s history, ice ages have occurred multiple times, usually between every 40 to 100,000 years. The earth’s surface will chill and freeze, until what Raines referred to as a thaw, which melts the ice caps and raises the sea levels. The last ice age was between 10 to 12,000 years ago, putting us today in a thawing period. Years ago, on the other hand, our area was colder, with a shoreline that was much further out than it is today. Raines states that the Underwater Forest shows us that at one time, there was a large forest growing out where in our world there is 60 feet of oceanwater, but at the end of the ice age, the sea levels rose with the melting ice caps, covering the forest and land.

This is just a handful of the secrets that the Underwater Forest has begun to uncover to scientists, and the research into the ancient cypress forest is ongoing as scientists strive to learn all that the forest has to teach.

You can check out the entire documentary (The Underwater Forest), which details the discovery of the forest, the research that’s been performed, and the results of that research, for yourself on AL.com, Youtube, or This is Alabama’s Roku and Apple TV apps. The documentary was co-produced by This is Alabama and the Alabama Coastal Foundation, and was written and directed by Raines.

The USA Distinguished Lecture Series is free to the public. To learn more about when the next lecture will be held, topic, and general information, check out their website at www.SouthAlabama.edu, and searching for “Distinguished Lecture Series.”