The Census of Marine Life Scientific Steering Committee was recently honored at the 2011 International Cosmos Prize Commemorative Lecture and Symposium, which is held to commemorate the 2011 Cosmos Prize winner.

Bottom-dwelling animals often release their larvae into the water for feeding and dispersal as “meroplankton.”

The “Beyond 2010” Workshop: Building a New International Science Program Beyond the First Census of Marine Life is taking place September 30 and October 1, 2011 in Aberdeen, Scotland.

A young Weddell seal (Leptonychotes weddellii) gets his final diving lessons. He is already the size of his mother, who is waiting under the water. Soon, he’ll be on his own.

Nereocystis, a marine alga commonly referred to as bull kelp, is often found in the nearshore and shallow gulf areas of North America’s Pacific Coast.

This photo shows a chionodraco hamatus, one of the Antarctic’s ice fish, which can withstand temperatures that freeze the blood of all other types of fish.

The “Beyond 2010” Workshop: Building a New International Science Program Beyond the First Census of Marine Life is only one month away.

This is a female black dragonfish, a deepwater predator that attracts prey with bioluminescent “lights” on its body and then snares them with its sharp teeth.

Census of Marine Life Scientists Announce New Estimated Number of Species on Earth. 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.

Rick Morris films soft corals at Libby’s Lair on the north side of Heron Island.

Aphyonus gelatinosus, a strange bottom-dwelling fish covered by a gelatinous layer, has only been recorded twice. One of these times was by Census scientists during an expedition along the northern Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

A Sargassum fish, often found in the drifting seaweed of the Atlantic and western Pacific. Is is a member of the frogfish family, a group of small, globular fishes with limb-like pectoral fins.