Green Daily

If you were to dive into an underwater crater caused by the largest nuclear device that the US has ever detonated, what would you expect to see? An deathly quiet and lifeless landscape that resembles pictures taken by the Mars Rover maybe? Some deformed fish? Two-head sea-snakes?

Anyway, what you probably wouldn't expect to see is a thriving coral reef ecosystem bustling with life, but that's the scene that greeted a team of international scientists when they paddled down into the mile wide Bravo crater in the Marshall Islands. Bikini Atoll, as the site is known, is unfit for human inhabitation above the water, but underneath it's actually not much different than any other coral reef in the area.

It's an unexpected example that illustrates the resilience of the coral reefs, but scientists are careful to point out that this is not evidence that humans don't have a large impact on reefs. Quite the opposite, part of the reason that the reef is so pristine is that humans have been completely absent from the area -- due to the fact that it's been blow up by a nuclear bomb 1,000 times more powerful than the dropped on Hiroshima.

Ironically, the intense above the water pollution has allowed the coral flourish. That might change soon, however. The team of scientists had been hired by the Marshall Islands to find out whether the area was safe enough for commercial diving operations.