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Alabama's Underwater Forest - TPR's In Focus - June 25, 2026 · In Focus with Carolyn Hutcheson

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  Support comes from Troy University's Trojan Cafe, offering handcrafted Starbucks beverages and a wide assortment of meal and snack options.
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  Located on Troy University's Montgomery campus, across from the Rosa Parks Library and Museum.
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  From Troy Public Radio,
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  this is In Focus, and I'm Carolyn Hutcheson. Off the coast of Alabama lies a
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  mysterious and ancient
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  underwater forest. Al Jones, senior economic development representative for the Alabama Forestry Commission,
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  joins us with the intriguing story he wrote about in a
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  2025 issue of Alabama's Treasured Forest Magazine.
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  Al Jones, welcome back to Troy Public Radio.
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  Thank you, Carolyn. It's an honor to be here again today and have the opportunity to talk to you and your listeners.
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  Al, you researched something called Alabama's
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  underwater forest.
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  Where is it?
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  It's located about 10 miles off the coast of Gulf Shores, and it's in about
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  60 feet of water. How was it discovered? After Hurricane Ivan,
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  fishermen started noticing that when they were in this area, that they were catching a lot of fish,
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  unusually large amount of fish. They decided to have somebody go down and look. They contacted a local dive shop,
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  and they sent somebody down, and when they got down,
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  they found that it was a lot of cypress stumps down there that were, to them,
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  unexplainable. It turns out that it probably was Hurricane Ivan that came through in
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  2004 that had scoured the ocean floor and
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  uncovered this ancient forest. And your article stated that the hurricane actually traveled over
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  153 miles inland.
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  Ivan has been overshadowed by Katrina, which came the next year. All the damage that it did in Louisiana,
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  Mississippi, a few other states, was just
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  catastrophic. But it had a much smaller effect in Alabama.
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  The winds didn't really do that much in Alabama from Katrina.
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  It was the storm surge, which only affected the very coastal communities.
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  But if you go back to Ivan, the amount of damage it did in Alabama was
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  extreme. Somehow, that's just kind of forgotten. The location of this underwater forest is
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  confidential. What are the plans for its future?
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  There is discussion of making a marine sanctuary.
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  It has not, at least over the last several months, gotten any traction
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  from the state or the federal government to protect it.
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  But hopefully that will come in the future. Al, when you researched the story,
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  you talked with a scientist who could tell us much more about what the underwater forest is.
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  So what did you find out? Yes, I contacted Kristen DeLong.
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  She is a professor at Louisiana State University in the Department of Geography and Anthropology.
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  And she has done in-depth studies on the project site. She has found a lot of fascinating information.
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  Could she determine the age of the underwater forest?
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  The tests were done. They brought up samples of the wood and the radiocarbon test.
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  It came back that the radiocarbon material was gone.
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  And for that material to be gone, scientists estimate that the trees had to be at least
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  48,000 years old, which was much older than Dr. DeLong expected.
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  So the Bureau of Ocean and Energy Management got involved and they funded a study,
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  according to your article, because they're interested in preserving archaeological sites.
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  Now, what is the archaeology tie in with this forest?
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  Dr. DeLong was having trouble finding grant funding for this area
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  because there were two different things to look at.
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  There were trees which you would go to the people who do funding for trees
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  and they would say, well, this is underwater and we have no interest in the water.
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  And then she would go to people who did oceanographic grants
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  and they would say, this is trees and we don't do trees.
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  So she finally was able to get grant funding by discussing the fact
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  that this area would have been occupied 10,000 years ago by Native Americans.
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  And the idea that there could be archaeological finds
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  to go along with the wood there is what originally got her funding.
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  So let's tie all of this together.
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  The archaeology, the wood aspect of it,
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  which, of course, the Alabama Forestry Commission would be interested in.
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  We're talking about a 48,000 year old plus forest.
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  Does it have to do with the coastline about where the Native Americans might have lived?
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  It does. There would have been there at about 10 miles off the coast
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  10,000 years ago, Native Americans living there, according to the site.
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  The interesting thing is when they cored these trees to look at the rings,
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  there's a ring database of international trees
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  and they can look at them and compare them.
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  The rings of the trees in the underwater forest
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  don't really match the rings of the trees in Alabama.
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  Now you have to go up to the Carolinas and up the Mississippi
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  River Valley to find tree rings that match what's in the underwater forest,
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  which tells you that at the time these trees went underwater,
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  we had the climate of North Carolina.
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  This gets into climate science and the evolution
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  of the different climates that we've been under.
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  It is strongly related to climates of years past.
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  Al, one of the interesting things about your story is the wood
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  and how it's providing habitat for all sorts of marine life.
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  But what sorts of wood are we talking about?
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  And are these stumps or more than stumps?
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  They are mostly stumps.
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  There are some small logs there, but that is very limited.
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  It's mostly ball cypress, but there have been the occasional pine tree
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  and palm tree, just coastal trees that have been found there.
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  But far and away, mostly ball cypress.
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  A palm tree. Now, this is a real shocker.
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  It's a shocker, but yet you have palm trees on the coast.
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  So even back in those days, there would have been palm trees
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  there on the coastline and they would have gone underwater with the rest of them.
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  Also among the trees that were found was some white Atlantic cedar,
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  which shows that our climate was, again,
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  North Carolina is showing close.
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  So it would appear that those would have been growing since we had a climate
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  10,000 years ago that was somewhat more like North Carolina.
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  Al, give us an idea of the scope of the site.
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  Are we talking about a large underwater forest?
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  Small what?
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  It's relatively small, but the interesting thing is that hurricanes
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  that came after Ivan have increased the size of the scour.
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  There was a lot of fear that the next hurricanes would cover up
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  what had been opened up by Ivan.
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  But the exact opposite has happened.
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  It started small, but it's getting ever larger.
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  Your article also referred to the fact that this is habitat.
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  This underwater forest provides habitat for marine life, such as what?
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  There's fish, there's octopi, there is a group of turtles,
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  all kinds of sea life in an area that should be just bare sand.
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  The fact that those stumps have been uncovered
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  has given a lot of cover for marine wildlife,
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  and they are taking full advantage of it.
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  Is the state of Alabama doing anything to protect this?
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  I don't know if you'd call it historic or prehistoric site.
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  I would call it prehistoric.
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  And so far, it has all just been talk.
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  There has been no official attempt to make it any kind of a protected area.
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  I feel like as more and more information is discovered
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  and the true importance of the site is more spelled out in the future,
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  that we could start to see stronger attempts to protect it.
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  I think that it is a one of a kind discovery
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  and it deserves all the protection it can get.
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  Al, thank you so much for telling us all about Alabama's
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  mysterious underwater forest.
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  You're welcome.
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  I really enjoy talking to you and your listeners.
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  And that was Al Jones, senior economic development representative
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  for the Alabama Forestry Commission.
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  He wrote about Alabama's underwater forest
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  in the 2025 issue number two
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  of Alabama's Treasured Forest magazine.
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  Thanks for joining us for In Focus, which is the podcast
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  wherever you get your podcasts.
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  I'm Carolyn Hutcheson, and this is listener supported
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  Troy Public Radio.