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You are at - Home | Media releases ________________________________________________________________________ Scientists Report Major Steps towards 1st Census of Marine Life November 10, 2008
www.coml.org Experts in all world regions are available for advance interviews. The 4th CoML highlights report will be officially released at the World Conference on Marine Biodiversity, Valencia, Spain, Nov. 11-15. Video and high-resolution images are online at www.coml.org/embargo/highlights2008
Meeting in
Spain,
global
crew
shares
progress
towards
historic
Census in
2010;
The
2,000-strong
community
of Census
of Marine
Life
scientists
from 82
nations
today
announced
astonishing
examples
of recent
new finds
from the
world’s
ocean
depths. In the fourth report issued since the global collaboration began in the year 2000, Census scientists say their work is:
According to Ian Poiner, chair of the Census’s International Scientific Steering Committee and Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Institute of Marine Science: "The release of the first Census in 2010 will be a milestone in science. After 10 years of new global research and information assembly by thousands of experts the world over, it will synthesize what humankind knows about the oceans, what we don’t know, and what we may never know – a scientific achievement of historic proportions." "Dedication and cooperation are enabling the largest, most complex program ever undertaken in marine biology to meet its schedule and reach its goals. When the program began, such progress seemed improbable to many observers." In 2010, the first global Census will relate:
With regard to distribution, the Census will offer:
With regard to diversity, the Census will offer:
With regard to abundance, the Census will offer:
Antarctic ancestry of many deep-sea octopuses worldwide Within their mandate "to assess and explain the diversity, distribution, and abundance of marine life in the oceans – past, present, and future," Census of Antarctic Marine Life scientists report the first molecular evidence that a large proportion of deep sea octopus species worldwide evolved from common ancestor species that still exist in the Southern Ocean. Octopuses started migrating to new ocean basins more than 30 million years ago when, as Antarctica cooled and a large icesheet grew, nature created a "thermohaline expressway," a northbound flow of tasty frigid water with high salt and oxygen content. Isolated in new habitat conditions, many different species evolved; some octopuses, for example, losing their defensive ink sacs – pointless at perpetually dark depths. This revelation into the global distribution and diversity of deep sea fauna, to be reported Nov. 11 in the journal Cladistics, was made possible by intensive sampling during Census International Polar Year expeditions. Highlights on offer include as well: Distribution:
Diversity:
Abundance:
Meanwhile, the Ocean Biogeographic Information System has grown to include more than 120,000 species. And a rapidly-expanding reference library of DNA barcodes of marine species recently helped reveal inaccurate labeling of sushi in New York City and elsewhere. As well, the national and regional networks expediting much of the Census work expanded from 10 to 12 since 2006. They and the field projects of the Census established precedent-setting ethical standards for marine research.
Ms Wendy Ellery, AIMS Media Liaison
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