Ocean Life Census Discovers Thousands of New Species
- 14 years ago
Marine scientists have completed the world's first ocean census. Thousands of exotic new species have been discovered that will help assess threats to the oceans ranging from climate change to oil spills.
Scientists completed the world's first ocean census on Monday.
The $650 million international census, by 2,700 experts in 80 nations, discovered creatures such as a hairy-clawed "yeti crab", luminous, a shrimp thought extinct and a 23-foot-long squid.
But researchers think that most of deep-sea creatures managed to dodge the census and are still to be found. Researcher Ian Poiner said scientists were surprised by the connectedness of life revealed by the survey.
[Ian Poiner, Census of Marine Life]:
"We have tunas that move from the West Coast of the U.S. to Japan and back to the West Coast. We have sharks that move from the southern coast of the southwest coast of Australia to South Africa and back. That sort of connectedness we didn't understand. Similarly, we have a connectedness north-south."
But negative human impacts were also recorded, including overfishing of cod and tuna stocks, hazards from oil and other pollution and impacts of global warming.
[David Billett, Co-Chair, Ocean Biogeochemistry & Ecosystems Group]:
"In one year, one percent of the seabed has been impacted physically by bottom trawling, itself quite a small figure, but if you put several years together, even though the fishermen may be go back to the same area, then this can be a large cumulative figure."
The census raises the estimate of known marine species bigger than microbes, from worms to blue whales, to nearly 250 thousand, up from 230 thousand. And it estimates that far more, as much as 750 thousand other species, are still to be discovered...mostly in vast unexplored parts of the Arctic, Antarctic and eastern Pacific oceans.
[...]
Scientists say they hope their work can change the way people think about the oceans and why they are so important.
Scientists completed the world's first ocean census on Monday.
The $650 million international census, by 2,700 experts in 80 nations, discovered creatures such as a hairy-clawed "yeti crab", luminous, a shrimp thought extinct and a 23-foot-long squid.
But researchers think that most of deep-sea creatures managed to dodge the census and are still to be found. Researcher Ian Poiner said scientists were surprised by the connectedness of life revealed by the survey.
[Ian Poiner, Census of Marine Life]:
"We have tunas that move from the West Coast of the U.S. to Japan and back to the West Coast. We have sharks that move from the southern coast of the southwest coast of Australia to South Africa and back. That sort of connectedness we didn't understand. Similarly, we have a connectedness north-south."
But negative human impacts were also recorded, including overfishing of cod and tuna stocks, hazards from oil and other pollution and impacts of global warming.
[David Billett, Co-Chair, Ocean Biogeochemistry & Ecosystems Group]:
"In one year, one percent of the seabed has been impacted physically by bottom trawling, itself quite a small figure, but if you put several years together, even though the fishermen may be go back to the same area, then this can be a large cumulative figure."
The census raises the estimate of known marine species bigger than microbes, from worms to blue whales, to nearly 250 thousand, up from 230 thousand. And it estimates that far more, as much as 750 thousand other species, are still to be discovered...mostly in vast unexplored parts of the Arctic, Antarctic and eastern Pacific oceans.
[...]
Scientists say they hope their work can change the way people think about the oceans and why they are so important.