Oceans census could net 5,000 new fish species
Scientists say there may be as many as 5,000 new fish species, following an unprecedented survey of the world’s oceans.
Scuttling and floating almost two miles below the North Atlantic are a ghostly, foot-tall octopod with fins sprouting from its head, a soft coral with starry feathers and a flower-like creature with the body of a worm.
Researchers showed otherworldly film of those and other creatures yesterday, from the census that is discovering more than 30 new species of animal and plant life every week. And the North Atlantic three don’t necessarily count.
“They can’t be described as a new species until we have a specimen,” Smithsonian biologist Michael Vecchione said of the deep-sea dive footage publicly screened for the first time at Washington’s National Museum of Natural History.
Scientists reporting their first findings since the project began in May 2000 said that by the time they have finished in 2010, they may have found more than two million different species of marine life.
“People have tended to look where it’s easy … and there’s so much more to be found,” said Jesse Ausubel, environmental scientist at The Rockefeller University in New York City. “We have discriminated in the past in favour of a very small number of species.”
Three hundred scientists from 53 countries are working on the decade-long census to learn the number of different species, the species’ populations and where they live. So far, the Census of Marine Life includes 15,304 different species of fish and 194,696 to 214,696 – there’s disagreement among the experts - species of animals and plants.
So far, the research is coming up with about 150 to 200 previously unknown species of fish and 1,700 new species of other aquatic animals and plants each year.
The scientists said they believe the oceans that extend across 70% of the Earth’s surface hold about 20,000 species of fish and up to 1.98 million species of animals and plants. Many of those could be basic and small life forms, such as worms and jellyfish.
“We’ve tended to be interested in the things that we eat,” said Ausubel, who helps run the census for the Alfred P Sloan Foundation, which provided £13 million in funding. “We’ve tended not to be interested in the things that pass through our nets or don’t taste good. But the small critters are tremendously important in the ecosystem … and in an evolutionary sense, the small things came first. They’re ancient, and they’re survivors.”
Scientists hope to gain a better understanding of life in the mostly unexplored seas.
Environmentalists are looking to the data to counter overfishing and pollution that has depleted the ocean’s resources. Industry hopes it will lead to more efficient fishing and shipping, new pharmaceuticals and industrial compounds.
“We have primarily studied a few hundred species that are of commercial importance,” said Ronald O’Dor, a marine biologist at Dalhousie University in Canada and the project’s chief scientist.
“Our goal by 2010 is to know as much about life in the oceans as we know about life on land now,” he said. “No one would claim that we know everything about life on land. There are probably still a few hundred thousand beetles in tropical forests that haven’t been described. But we’d like to aim for parity.”
The project grew from scientists’ concerns following a 1995 National Academy of Sciences report that human population growth was quickly changing the diversity of life in the oceans, possibly irreversibly.
So far, about £45 million has been spent on the census. Its price tag is eventually expected to reach one billion dollars, most of it from participating governments.
“We know we won’t have counted every animal,” said Frederick Grassle, director of Rutgers University’s Institute of Marine & Coastal Sciences, the chairman of the project’s scientific steering committee.
