The vast, underexplored seas covering much of the planet could be the key to saving what remains of a more familiar undersea feature , a new study finds. The “living rock” that thrives in tropical shallows around the world, coral supports a quarter of all marine life. Yet around 20 percent of the world’s coral is already gone, and most of the rest is severely threatened by climate breakdown, overfishing and pollution. Now, a deep dive into history on the “high seas” — the waters that lie beyond maritime borders — is providing a ray of hope for the world’s reefs: Combing through historical data and more than half a million records on the distribution of corals worldwide, researchers identified more than 116 coral reefs flourishing throughout the high seas. Conservation News spoke to the study’s lead author, Daniel Wagner, a marine scientist at Conservation International, about the scientific allure of the high seas and what this discovery could mean for the world’s dying reefs.…