A sea of new marine discoveries is testament to the hard work of the international scientific community.
This international alliance of scientists from over 70 countries is working on the Census of Marine Life (COML), a $1 billion, 10-year project to reveal the variety of marine life and their lifestyles.
It is hoped that the information gathered in the COML will help in future conservation efforts.
These initial results are just from the surface of the oceans. The data has been gathered from only the first 100m.
Virtually no information has been gathered from the deeper depths yet. It is anticipated that many more new species will be discovered once these deeper depths are scoured for the census; when a fish is caught below 2,000m, it is 50 times more likely to be new to science.
The COML scientists do use fishing boats in their data collecting. Some of the newly discovered species were pulled up on trawls, counted and catalogued.
When the specimens were tagged and tracked, a remarkable picture of how life in the depths of the ocean has started to develop.
The scientists have found that the organisms live within a circular movement - an almost doughnut shape - with marine life concentrated in deep water. These doughnut shapes were 10km in diameter and thousands of metres below the surface.
The information gathered has allows the COML scientists to create a map of the distribution of 38,000 marine species, from plankton to whales.
While vast areas of the worldÕs oceans have returned no data at all, some areas such as the mid-Atlantic Ridge recorded 80,000 specimens. This region alone is expected to add several new fish species to the 106 discovered this year.
By the time the census is finished in 2010, the total fish count is expected to rise to about 20,000; the current total is 15,482.
However, the fish biomass is dwarfed by that of microscopic life forms that account for 90% of ocean biomass.
Scientists believe that a greater knowledge about microbes will be extremely useful, as these organisms play a key role in removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Some 90% of all carbon that is taken up by marine life is absorbed by microbes, which are found in the deep-ocean sediments buried beneath the sea floor.
Mick Perkins
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Scientists tapping into the secrets of ocean life have unearthed an amazing 13,000 new marine species.
