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 recently.

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.

Census researchers mounted 19 ocean expeditions in 2006 (a 20th expedition underway in the Antarctic can be followed online at www.awi.de/MET/Polarstern/psobse.html). They inventoried nearshore biodiversity, where the number of active sampling sites grew exponentially from 30 to 128 in 2006 alone. And, using satellites, they followed across thousands of kilometers of ocean more than 20 tagged species - from sharks and squid to sea lions and albatross.

"Each Census expedition reveals new marvels of the ocean - and with the return of each vessel it is increasingly clear that a number of more discoveries await marine explorers for years to come," says Fred Grassle, Chair of the Census Scientific Steering Committee.

Each of 17 core projects produces a different dimension of knowledge. Two new associate projects were added in 2006, studying biodiversity in the Gulf of Mexico and along the seafloor of the Great Barrier Reef.

The Census Ocean Biogeographic Information System now publishes over 140 global databases, producing an online library of more than 10 million distribution records (up from 4 million just two years ago) of over 78,000 species.

A complementary library of short DNA sequences - barcodes for quick identification of marine animals - grew past 4,000, including 2,000 fish. Holes in the Census database define clearly the unknown ocean.

Extremes of Science.

Hottest.

At a thermal vent 3 km below the surface in the equatorial Atlantic, Census scientists found shrimp and other life forms on the periphery of fluids billowing from Earth's core at an unprecedented marine recording of 407 degree C, a temperature that would melt lead easily. Eventhough the species resemble those around other vents, researchers want to study how, surrounded by near-freezing 2 degree C water, their chemistry allows them to withstand heat pulses that approach the boiling point - up to 80ºC. Shrimp were seen on the walls of the vent chimney. Others in the habitat include mussels and clams. All somehow tolerate an environment of extreme temperature changes within a few centimeters and high concentrations of heavy metals from the vent fluids.

Darkest.

Southern Ocean census takers revealed an astonishing community of marine life shrouded beneath 700 meters of ice - 200 km from open water. Equally remarkable, sampling of this most remote ocean's depths during three lengthy cruises yielded more new than familiar species.

Most.

Census fish counters' observation off the New Jersey coast of 20 million fish swarmed in a school the size of Manhattan Island qualifies as most new abundance found. Sound emitted by a new ship-based technology illuminates life in an oceanic area tens of thousands times larger than previously possible. It updates instantaneously and continuously, revealing the extension and shrinking, fragmentation and merging of the island-sized swarms as a person might watch schools of minnows swimming in a brook beneath a bridge.

Deepest.

Sampling 5 km below the surface in the Sargasso Sea, deploying a unique trawl configuration that filtered large volumes of water for rare-but-diverse zooplankton living in the ocean's deepest depths, Census experts from 14 nations caught these drifting, often soft and elusive animals in a sophisticated net, the MOCNESS. They collected more than 500 species, including 12 likely new species, eating each other at the great depths or living on organic matter falling like snow from above. (CMarZ photo of menacing-looking, animals such as this amphipod, a small prawn-like crustacean, the supposed inspiration for the movie Alien.

Oldest.

Census seamount scientists found a shrimp, believed extinguished 50 million years ago, alive and well on an underwater peak in the Coral Sea. Neoglyphea neocaledonica was nicknamed "Jurassic shrimp" by its discoverers, who say it rivals the find in South Africa and Indonesia of the coelacanth, a prehistoric fish previously known only through fossils.

Richest.

In the sense that biodiversity is richness, Census microbe hunters found 20,000 kinds floating in a single liter of sea water. Samples were taken from the Atlantic and Pacific, including from an eruptive fissure 1,500 meters deep on a seamount in the Pacific a few hundred kilometers west of Oregon, USA. Revealed by DNA studies, most of the different kinds of bacteria were unknown and likely rare globally. The richness of the diversity invites speculation about what rare species contribute to their biosphere and an estimate that the kinds of bacteria in the oceans exceed five to 10 million. The scientists also began assembling the best-ever video of protists (mostly microscopic organisms that are neither animals, plants, or fungi) and to pioneer optical and genetic techniques to extend the limits of knowledge. (The video is available for media at the embargoed media materials URL. Credit: Jeremy Pickett-Heaps).

Farthest.

Tracking tagged sooty shearwaters by satellite, Census scientists mapped the small bird's 70,000 km search for food in a giant figure eight over the Pacific Ocean, from New Zealand via Polynesia to foraging grounds in Japan, Alaska and California and then back. Making the longest-ever electronically-recorded migration in only 200 days, the bird averaged a surprising 350 km daily. In some cases, a breeding pair made the entire journey together.

Largest.

Among the a number of new species discovered by Census participants during 2006, a 1.8 kg (4 lb) rock lobster that Census explorers found off Madagascar may be the largest. Named Palinurus barbarae, the main body spans half a meter.


Posted by: Beverly    Source

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