23 Aug 2011
Eight million, seven hundred thousand species (give or take 1.3 million).
That is a new, estimated total number of species on Earth — the most precise calculation ever offered — with 6.5 million species found on land and 2.2 million (about 25 percent of the total) dwelling in the ocean depths.
Announced today by Census of Marine Life scientists, the figure is based on an innovative, validated analytical technique that dramatically narrows the range of previous estimates. Until now, the number of species on Earth was said to fall somewhere between 3 million and 100 million.
Furthermore, the study, published today by PLoS Biology, says a staggering 86% of all species on land and 91% of those in the seas have yet to be discovered, described and catalogued.
Full text, click here
Coverage summary, click here
Sample coverage: stories by The Associated Press, click here; the Washington Post, click here, and the New York Times, click here. New York Times editorial, click here.
]]>22 June 2011
Decade of electronic tagging, tracking of 23 top Pacific Ocean predators reveals remarkable homing by marine animals, well-defined highways
Like the vast African plains, two huge expanses of the North Pacific Ocean are major corridors of life, attracting an array of marine predators in predictable seasonal patterns, according to final results from the Census of Marine Life Tagging of Pacific Predators (TOPP) project published today in the journal Nature.
The paper culminates the TOPP program’s decade-long effort to track top marine predator movements in the Pacific Ocean. It presents for the first time the results for all 23 tagged species and reveals how migrations and habitat preferences overlap — a remarkable picture of critical marine life pathways and habitats.
The study found that major hot spots for large marine predators are the California Current, which flows south along the US west coast, and a trans-oceanic migration highway called the North Pacific Transition Zone, which connects the western and eastern Pacific on the boundary between cold sub-arctic water and warmer subtropical water — about halfway between Hawaii and Alaska.
“These are the oceanic areas where food is most abundant, and it’s driven by high primary productivity at the base of the food chain — these areas are the savanna grasslands of the sea,” say co-authors and project originators Barbara Block of Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station and Daniel Costa, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
“Knowing where and when species overlap is valuable information for efforts to manage and protect critical species and ecosystems.”
Full news release: click here
Coverage summary: click here
Example coverage, by Washington Post: click here; more sources, click here
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Census of Marine LifeWashington DC, USA
4-Oct-2010
Culminating a 10-year exploration, 2,700 scientists from 80 nations report first Census of Marine Life, revealing what, where, and how much lives and hides in global oceans
To measure changes caused by climate or oil spills, Census establishes a baseline
New species discovered, marine highways and rest stops mapped, diminished abundance documented
Online Census directory allows anyone to map global addresses of species
Full news release: click here
Coverage summary: click here
Example coverage: by the Associated Press, click here; by the Wall Street Journal, click here; by Agence France Presse Television, click here; by the BBC World Service TV, click here; by CNN, click here, by Brazil’s O Globo TV, click here; by Scholastic Science World for students, click here; by TIME for Kids, click here
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Census of Marine LifeWashington, DC
2-Aug-2010
Representing the most comprehensive and authoritative answer yet to one of humanity’s most ancient questions — “what lives in the sea?” — Census of Marine Life scientists today released an inventory of species distribution and diversity in key global ocean areas.
Scientists combined information collected over centuries with data obtained during the decade-long Census to create a roll call of species in 25 biologically representative regions — from the Antarctic through temperate and tropical seas to the Arctic.
Their papers help set a baseline for measuring changes that humanity and nature will cause.
Full news release text: click here
Coverage summary, click here
Coverage by the Agence France Presse, click here, by CBS News, click here; other sources, click here and here
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Census of Marine LifeWashington DC
18-Apr-2010
Microbial mat the size of Greece found on oxygen-starved South American seafloor; Scientists puzzle out Neptune’s riotous diversity of tiny creatures;
“In no other ocean realm has discovery been as extensive”;
Explorers yet to find any lifeless place on Earth below 150
Release of historic global ocean
Ocean explorers are puzzling out Nature’s purpose behind an astonishing variety of tiny ocean creatures like microbes and zooplankton animals – each perhaps a ticket-holder in life’s lottery, awaiting conditions that will allow it to prosper and dominate.
The inventory and study of the hardest-to-see sea species — tiny microbes, zooplankton, larvae and burrowers in the sea bed, which together underpin almost all other life on Earth — is the focus of four of 14 field projects of the Census of Marine Life.
Full news release text: click here
Census of Marine Life
Census of Marine Life scientists have inventoried an astonishing abundance, diversity and distribution of deep sea species that have never known sunlight – creatures that somehow manage a living in a frigid black world down to 5,000 meters (~3 miles) below the ocean waves.
Coverage summary: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AlbF9zth54L8dHRuNXJ3ZWNmUnlRNTlpODR4b09Ya1E&hl=en
Example coverage by CNN, click here; more sources, click here
Before oil hunters in the early 1800s harpooned whales by the score, the ocean around New Zealand teemed with about 27,000 southern right whales – roughly 30 times as many as today – according to one of several astonishing reconstructions of ocean life in olden days to be presented at a Census of Marine Life conference May 26-28.Using such diverse sources as old ship logs, literary texts, tax accounts, newly translated legal documents and even mounted trophies, Census researchers are piecing together images – some flickering, others in high definition – of fish of such sizes, abundance and distribution in ages past that they stagger modern imaginations.
Coverage summary: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=r26Tgt0R6Mtr2_E30XaNKoA&hl=en
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Earth’s unique, forbidding ice oceans of the Arctic and Antarctic have revealed a trove of secrets to Census of Marine Life explorers, who were especially surprised to find at least 235 species live in both polar seas despite a distance of more than 13,000-kilometer distance in between.The scientists found marine life that both poles apparently share in common include marathoners such as some great whales (blue www.eol.org/pages/328574; humpback www.eol.org/pages/328575; fin www.eol.org/pages/328573) and birds, but also worms, crustaceans, and angelic snail-like pteropods, the latter discoveries opening a host of future research questions about where they originated and how they wound up at both ends of the Earth. DNA analysis is underway to confirm whether the species are indeed identical.
Among many other findings, the scientists also documented evidence of cold water-loving species shifting towards both poles to escape rising ocean temperatures.
Washington DC
9-Nov-2008
Among report’s revelations: Antarctic ancestry of many octopus species, behemoth bacteria, colossal sea stars, mammoth mollusks, more
In a report on progress towards the first Census of Marine Life, more than 2,000 scientists from 82 nations announce astonishing examples of recent new finds from the world’s ocean depths.
As more than 500 delegates gather for the World Conference on Marine Biodiversity (Valencia, Spain Nov. 11-15), organized by the Census’s European affiliate program on Marine Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning, the report details major progress towards the first ever marine life census, for release in October, 2010. In Spain, renowned marine scientists will announce more new and surprising results daily throughout the event, to be opened with a news conference in Valencia Tues. Nov. 11.
In the fourth report issued since the global collaboration began in the year 2000, Census scientists say their work is:
* Compiling an unprecedented number of “firsts” for ocean biodiversity;
* Advancing technology for discovery;
* Organizing knowledge about marine life and making it accessible;
* Measuring effects of human activities on ocean life;
* Providing the foundation for scientifically-based policies.
According to Ian Poiner, chair of the Census’s International Scientific Steering Committee and Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Institute of Marine Science, “The release of thefirst Census in 2010 will be a milestone in science. After 10 years of new global research and information assembly by thousands of experts the world over, it will synthesize what humankind knows about the oceans, what we don’t know, and what we may never know – a scientific achievement of historic proportions.”
Bottom left: Megeleledone setebos, endemic to the Southern Ocean, surrounded by related octopus species that evolved in the deep-sea. Click here for more information.
Full news release text:
www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-11/coml-sam110308.php
Coverage summary:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pRwdzmg01IrS2OeiDIMRHBg
Washington D.C.
18-Sep-2008
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 first 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.
Full text: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-09/coml-efh091208.php
Coverage summary: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pRwdzmg01IrRpiC7PrOQTXA&hl=en
Example coverage: click here
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