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Please watch The Underwater Forest documentary below and then click here to learn how you can help get it designated as part of the National Marine Sanctuary System!
The Underwater Forest is a documentary by Ben Raines, and the Alabama Coastal Foundation is proud to be a producer along with This is Alabama! The film explores an ancient cypress forest discovered sixty feet underwater in the Gulf of Mexico off the Alabama coast. The forest dates to an ice age more than 60,000 years ago, when sea levels were about 400 feet lower than they are today. Hurricane Ivan uncovered the Underwater Forest in 2004. Legislation to protect the area was introduced in Congress in 2020, the same year that a record was broken in terms of the most tropical/subtropical storms were recorded in a single year. To watch the film, please click on the image below be directed to YouTube:
The American Filmatic Arts Awards chose the film as the Best Ecological Short Documentary and Ben Raines was selected as the recipient of the Alabama Filmmaker Award at the Fairhope Film Festival!
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