If you’ve visited the Gulf Coast, you’ve probably seen at least one cypress tree. Tall and proud, with knobby knees extending from the ground surrounding them, these trees freckle many forests in the southeastern U.S. But there’s one such forest that’s not like the rest: It lies 15 miles off Alabama’s coast in the Gulf of Mexico, is more than 50,000 years old and is revealed in the short film The Underwater Forest.

Submerged 10 fathoms down, this ancient woodland area is covered with sea anemones and sponges; surrounded by fish instead of squirrels and birds. Thousands of Cypress stumps lie still rooted in what’s now the sea floor but, more than 50 millennia ago, was a riverine environment much like the rich habitats we have on the Gulf Coast today.

So how did it get there, and how was it discovered all these years later? Well, it was always there, submerged long ago due to climate change, but it was only discovered recently by humans thanks to Hurricane Ivan, a Category 4 storm that ripped straight up the Gulf of Mexico in 2004, uncovering the layer of sand that was hiding the prehistoric riverbed. Local dive shop owner Chas Broughton responded to a call after the hurricane that led him to a site unlike any other he’d seen before. The wood was swarming like a coral reef.

“Right then you knew you had something just totally different than what you've ever seen in the Gulf in 25 years of diving, so it was quite magnificent,” he said.

Broughton enlisted scientists and an environmental journalist to help him survey the forest, making sure not to give out the coordinates to the site and applying for the land to be considered a National Marine Sanctuary. They began using divers to help collect pieces of the wood for sampling to try to date the forest, but some of the trees were so old they couldn’t use radiocarbon dating to figure age. Some newer branches came back about 42,000-45,000 years old.

What the team was possibly most excited about was the potential of what the forest could reveal about the future in an era of rising sea levels, which provokes viewers to think about what we can learn from this ancient environment. The Earth has gone through climate changes before, and seeing this forest and how it has been preserved is a sign of the resilience of Mother Nature.

Although they hadn’t come to any specific conclusions by the time the film was released, the forest’s secrets will be revealed in the coming years, as our oceans continue to rise and current coastal woodlands become more susceptible to following in the footsteps of this ancient subaquatic wonder.

To see more about the amazing forest, watch the film below.

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