November 9, 2008
Scientists Report Major Steps
Hundreds of new kinds of animal species surprised international researchers systematically exploring waters off two islands on the Great Barrier Reef and a reef off northwestern Australia -- waters long familiar to divers.
The expeditions, affiliated with the global Census of Marine Life, help mark the International Year of the Reef and included the systematic scientific inventory of spectacular soft corals, named octocorals for the eight tentacles that fringe each polyp.
The explorers today released some initial results and stunning images from their landmark four-year effort to record the diversity of life in and around Australia's renowned reefs.
For more details view the full press release.
Census of Marine Life-affiliated scientists (www.coml.org ) consolidating world databases of ocean organisms have demoted to alias status almost one-third of all names culled from 34 regional and highly specialized inventories.
The new World Register of Marine Species (www.marinespecies.org ) contains about 122,500 validated marine species names (experts having recognized and tidied up some 56,400 aliases - 32% of all names reviewed). It also contains some 5,600 images, hyperlinks to taxonomic literature and other information.
Marking the World Register's official inauguration, some 55 researchers from 17 countries met in Belgium to plan its completion by 2010. Leading World Register experts independently estimate that about 230,000 marine species are known to science. They also believe there are three times as many unknown (unnamed) marine species as known, for a grand total on Earth that could surpass 1 million.
Census of Marine Life-affiliated scientists, plumbing the secrets of a vast underwater mountain range south of New Zealand, captured the first images of a novel "Brittlestar City" that colonized against daunting odds the peak of a seamount - an underwater summit taller than the world's tallest building.
Its cramped starfish-like inhabitants, tens of millions living arm tip to arm tip, owe their success to the seamount's shape and to the swirling circumpolar current flowing over and around it at roughly four kilometers per hour. It allows Brittlestar City's underwater denizens to capture passing food simply by raising their arms, and it sweeps away fish and other hovering would-be predators.
Discovery of this marine metropolis, along with important new insights into seamount geology and physics, highlighted a month-long April expedition to survey the Macquarie Ridge aboard the Research Vessel Tangaroa of New Zealand's National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research, host of the Census of Marine Life seamount programme, CenSeam. The voyage was largely funded by the New Zealand Foundation for Research, Science and Technology.