On day two, we headed back over to the same general spot offshore to Ta'u. Our boat captain, Andy, noticed a blip on his depth finder so Paul and Doug grabbed their masks and snorkels and jumped in to investigate. Meredith and I soon followed and we were all hovering over a very big coral. It was immediately apparent that we had in fact located the giant coral. It was 2-3 times bigger than any of the other large corals we had seen previously. We proceeded to get on our dive gear and head under. 
The coral looks like a small mountain underwater. Unfortunately, light and color are absorbed the deeper you go underwater. Our point and shoot camera is better at taking close-ups underwater than wide-angle shots so you'll have to use your imagination a bit with the pictures. However, if some blogger whiz out there could tell me how to post video, we have some great quality film clips I could post on the blog. Anyways, the top of the coral is located in 25 feet of water and the bottom at 50 feet. Our work as research assistants quickly set in, as Meredith and I began measuring this and adjacent Porites corals while Paul was filming. The circumference of the coral is 41 meters. This really is big, as it took a minute to swim all the way around it. It measures over 34 x 22 meters in width and length.
Given the size of a coral, its age can be estimated. This giant coral is over 1,000 years old! That could make it one of the oldest living animals on Earth!
