Program Update: Census of Marine Life – January 2010
Filed under: Census of Marine Life,Discovery,News & Resources,Program Updates - Census of Marine Life
Tagging of Pacific Predators (TOPP) program, a component of the Census of Marine Life (CoML). (Illustration by Kate Spencer)
The Census of Marine Life (CoML) released its latest newsletters: the international CoML “What’s New with CoML,” highlighting stories from the last quarter of 2009 and the beginning of 2010; and the U.S. CoML newsletter, highlighting the most recent CoML press release and featuring an interview with Dr. Ian Poiner (CoML Scientific Steering Committee Chair). Both newsletters are available on the Ocean Leadership website at http://www.oceanleadership.org/news-resources/publications/.
CoML scientists from the Chemosynthetic Ecosystems project (ChEss) are aboard the RRS James Cook on an expedition to the East Scotia Ridge to explore areas of the deep seabed of the Southern Ocean to locate and investigate hot water vents (hydrothermal vents) and cold seeps. As a follow up to an earlier expedition in which researchers mapped the seafloor, on this cruise, researchers will be utilizing a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) working at depths of 2800 meters using high definition cameras to record the animals living in these extreme habitats. A photo gallery and daily blog is accessible at Classroom@Sea at http://www.classroomatsea.net/.
Members of the U.S. National Committee (USNC) for CoML have been hard at work on a publication entitled “An Overview of Marine Biodiversity in United States Waters.” The publication is part of the collection: “Marine Biodiversity and Biogeography – Regional Comparisons of Global Issues,” which will appear on PLoS ONE, an interactive open-access journal, this spring. Specific CoML topics will be gathered into collections of articles on the PLoS ONE web site. Currently, there is a collection of papers which highlights research performed under the auspices of the Tagging of Pacific Predators (TOPP) project, a component of CoML. Stay tuned for more information on the USNC’s article and to learn more about the TOPP collection, please visit the PLoS ONE web site http://www.ploscollections.org/article/browseIssue.action?issue=info:doi/10.1371/issue.pcol.v01.i03.
