Census casts light on mysteries of the marine world
By Lewis Smith
August 02 2010 Lewis Smith
Venus fly-trap in the Gulf of Mexico
Photo Credit: (photograph by I. MacDonald), Felder, D. L. and Camp, D. K.
Great strides have been made in identifying the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns living in the waters around the United States, a leading scientist has said.
Professor Bob Carney, of Louisiana State University, said the decade-long Census of Marine Life has revealed how little is known about life in the seas.
"I would say it’s shown us how much we don’t know yet," he said as a paper assessing life in the seas around the US was published on PloS ONE.
But by categorising, classifying and organising what is known and understood, scientists now have a much better idea the types of marine creatures and ecosystems that most need studying.
Instead of resorting to an uncoordinated "scattergun approach", he said, scientists can now be much more focussed in their effort. "With the support of the Census of Marine Life we are moving into a new era," he said.
The paper on US marine biodiversity is written by 18 scientists from academic institutions around the country.
It divided US waters into six different regions – the north east and south east, the Gulf of Mexico, Californian waters, Hawaii and other parts of the Pacific, and the Arctic – and established bow many species were in known to be in each.
The Gulf of Mexico, with 15,419 species, boasted the richest biodiversity, followed by California with 10,160 and Hawaii with 8,427. The High Arctic has 5,925 while the north eastern continental shelf region has 5,042 and the south eastern continental shelf has 4,277.
Among the ecosystems found to be well understood and widely documents are the coral reefs of the Florida Keys which have 520 fish species, the hard-bottom areas of the continental shelf and slope, and the estuarine oyster reef.
Among the marine environments identified by the researchers as poorly understood and needing further study are deep sea areas off both the east and west coasts, seamounts in Alaskan waters, small soft-bodied and shell-less invertebrates in the Gulf of Mexico.
Overfishing is identified as the single biggest threat to marine life in the waters around the United States but there are several others, including the spread of invasive species, oxygen depletion and oil spills.
Researchers wrote: "Most threats identified for the US are true for the entire world. Foremost is overexploitation of living resources, especially fishes and invertebrates for food, by both commercial and recreational fishers."
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