Opinion: The Amazon Reef is one of the natural wonders of the world - and that's why the oil companies must be told to keep away, says Aidan Semmens

We live in an age when it's possible to fly from London to Sydney in less than 24 hours and you can talk in real time to people anywhere. Presenters of TV documentaries can start a sentence in Siberia and end it in the Sahara.

Communications technology has shrunk the world. You might be forgiven for thinking there was nothing on the planet still to be discovered.

What a joyful surprise, then, to learn only last year that a previously unknown coral reef, amost 700 miles long, had been found off the coast of South America.

Joyful, and in a curious way something of a relief too. As if the discovery of a reef in one part of the world could compensate for the death of another, 10,000 miles away.

Australia's Great Barrier Reef has been called 'the canary in the coal mine' for global warming. Its reported death may be both symptom and further cause of ecological catastrophe on a massive scale.

Meanwhile, the newly-discovered Amazon Reef appears to be thriving.

Corals live mostly in clear salt water with plenty of sunlight. This one has astonished marine biologists because the outflow from the Amazon makes its waters among the muddiest and least salty sea areas in the world.

Yet they have found there 73 species of fish, 60 types of sponge and a rich variety of other life. There are dolphins, turtles, manatees and species that haven't yet been named.

The reef may have been unknown until recently, but its importance to the global ecosystem – and our knowledge of it – may be considerable. That Amazon outflow amounts to a fifth of all the water flowing into the world's oceans.

Here then, is an amazing place. An environment and a habitat to cherish.

The last thing it needs is multinational oil companies diving in with their drills and rigs to rip it up, spoil and pollute it. One spill like BP's 2010 Gulf of Mexico disaster could do untold damage.

So who's prospecting for oil on the Amazon Reef right now? BP and Total. They need to be stopped.