Extreme Life, Marine Style, Highlights 2006 Ocean Census; Frontiers of Marine Science Stretched by Census experts

A host of record-breaking discoveries and revelations that stretch the extreme frontiers of marine knowledge were achieved by the Census of Marine Life in 2006, highlights of which were released today.

They include life adapted to brutal conditions around 407ºC fluids spewing from a seafloor vent (the hottest ever discovered), a mighty microbe 1 cm in diameter, mysterious 1.8 kg (4 lb) lobsters off the Madagascar coast, a US school of fish the size of Manhattan Island, and more unfamiliar than familiar species turned up beneath 700 meters of Antarctic ice.

Now in its 6th year, Census participants and their supporters pool talents and specialties, ships and laboratories, archives and technology in an unprecedented global scientific collaboration. Together, they are systematically recording the diversity, distribution, and abundance of global marine life. The most intense field work is taking place in 2006-8; the results will be analysed and synthesized in 2009-10 with the goal by 2010 of an initial census describing what lived, now lives, and will live in the oceans.