The enormous organism is bigger than a blue whale and made up of millions of genetically identical, tiny animals called polyps

From the surface, “it looked like a shipwreck,” said Molly Timmers, lead scientist of the Pristine Seas expedition. But the team’s cinematographer dove to take a closer look and found a “mega coral hiding in plain sight.”

A group of scientists working aboard a research vessel in the southwest Pacific Ocean has discovered the world’s largest coral. Thirty-four meters wide and thirty-two meters long, the gigantic organism is a complex network of coral polyps—tiny individual creatures—that have grown over a span of three centuries.