Science taps into ocean secrets

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Go look at the full article and the piccies! I am sure it would breach copyright for me to post them here!

Full article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4033555.stm

Science taps into ocean secrets

This goby fish from Guam lives in partnership with a shrimp
Some 13,000 new marine species have been discovered in the past year, according to information released by an international alliance of scientists.
The Census of Marine Life (COML) has also uncovered previously unknown migration routes used by fish such as tuna and shark.

The $1bn 10-year project, which is building a huge database, involves researchers in more than 70 countries.

The new knowledge will inform future conservation and fisheries policies.

In some of the results we've had you can see a kind of doughnut of circulation which seems to concentrate life in deep water

Dr Fred Grassle, Rutgers University
"We're just skimming the surface," said Dr Ron O'Dor, Chief Census Scientist, based in Washington DC, US.

"We know something about the first 100m at this point but we know almost nothing about what lies down in the deep.

"Our analysis shows that if you catch a fish below 2,000m it is 50 times more likely to be new to science," he told the BBC News website.

Map of life

The census has seen an exponential growth in knowledge in the 12 months since it issued its last progress report.

More than 80,000 specimens were collected during an expedition to the mid-Atlantic ridge.

Some specimens are pulled up on trawls, counted and catalogued. Other organisms are even tagged and tracked.

A remarkable picture of how life operates in the deep is beginning to emerge.

"In some of the results we've had you can see a kind of doughnut of circulation which seems to concentrate life in deep water," explained Dr Fred Grassle of Rutgers University, US, who chairs the Census' International Scientific Steering Committee.

"The doughnuts were 10km in diameter and thousands of metres below the surface."

The project's Ocean Biographic Information System database now includes more than 5.2 million new and previously existing records of the location, date and depth at which a marine species was found - a rise of 1.1 million entries.

The census is shedding more light on zooplankton
The information has allowed the COML to create a map of the distribution of 38,000 marine species, from plankton to whales.

Vast areas of the world's oceans have yet to return any data at all.

One survey, however, on the mid-Atlantic Ridge, recorded 80,000 specimens. It is expected to add several new fish species to the 106 marked by the census this year............