Advancing Through a Decade – A Census of the Sea
Filed under: Census of Marine Life,Discovery,News & Resources
Dr Ron O’Dor, senior scientist at the Census for Marine Life, says that this unprecedented global programme has discovered new habitats as well as new species:
"Census projects have created a transparent ocean" -Ron D'Or
(Excerpt of article from BBC News) — In the 1990s, a panel representing the US National Research Council reported that no nation in the world had a catalogue of the life in its marine economic zone. This was a condition of the Convention on Biological Diversity.
To rectify this, the Alfred P Sloan Foundation agreed to fund a decade-long Census of Marine Life. It evolved into a three-quarter billion dollar programme involving thousands of scientists from 82 countries.
Researchers took samples from the Arctic to the Antarctic, from the seafloor to the surface, near-shore to mid-ocean and microbes to mammals.
This was and continues to be an unprecedented global collaboration.
The census has provided 20 million records records of marine species.
A global database now provides over 20 million records of species in the waters of all nations, as well as the deep sea. And beyond this, the census has already discovered some 6,000 new species and new habitats, from boiling fish to giant microbes.
Experimental technologies have become routine observational tools that will allow us to understand the impacts of climate change and human activity on the over 90% of the biosphere that lies beneath the waves.
Census projects have created a transparent ocean where DNA barcodes allow species to be identified in hours instead of months and where the migrations of animals from 20 grams to 20 mega-tonnes can be followed between countries and between oceans.
One record-setting bluefin tuna crossed the Pacific three times, averaging over 100 km per day.
With this incredible dataset, we can now directly monitor endangered species and establish protected areas. This information is vital for conservation and sustainable fisheries.
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