4um: Oil-drilling worms (eat oil) and brittlestar cities: taking stock of life in the oceans

Title: Oil-drilling worms (eat oil) and brittlestar cities: taking stock of life in the oceans
Source: nature.com
URL Source: http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2010/10/coml_1.html
Published: Oct 4, 2010
Author: Ewen Callaway
Post Date: 2010-10-04 14:53:38 by hondo68
Keywords: Oil Drilling Worms, Oil Drilling Natural, Worms Eat Oil, Violating drilling moratorium
Views: 22

What lives in the sea? That question has been the singular focus of the Census of Marine Life, an ambitious 10-year survey, launched in 2000, that is reporting its findings at a Royal Society symposium in London today.

Of course, the project hasn’t catalogued all the life in the world’s oceans, but census has vastly increased our knowledge of the ocean biodiversity and filled in many gaps, its scientists say. Highlights profiled in last week's Nature news feature on the project include a tubeworm that drills for oil at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, a 'brittlestar city' with tens of millions of the creatures living in close quarters atop a seamount south of New Zealand, and data - copious amounts of data.

Our feature also addresses the future of the census. The organization that provided a large chunk of the money to get the project started, the Sloan Foundation, has said all along that it isn’t ponying up for a second instalment, so census scientists are hoping other ocean-loving funders step in.

With all due to respect to the Harper’s Index, here is the Census of Marine Life by the numbers:

2700 - Scientists involved
9000 - Days at sea scientists spent on 540 expeditions
2600 - Research papers produced
28,000,000 – Observations collected in a database created for the census
650,000,000 - Global investment in US dollars
1,000,000 - Estimated number of species in the ocean, excluding microbes
250,000 - Species formally described in the literature
1200 - New species described by census scientists since 2000
5000 - Estimated number of new species collected during the census not yet described
18,000,000 – Microbial DNA sequences collected

Images (from top, right):
A new species of copepod, Ceratonotus steiningeri, discovered 5,400 meters deep in the Angola Basin in 2006. (Courtesy of Jan Michels)

Polychaete worm (Vigtorniella) found at a whale fall at Sagami Bay, Japan at a depth of 925 meters.
(Courtesy of Yoshihiro Fujiwara/JAMSTEC)

A new species of hydromedusae, Bathykorus bouilloni, observed below 1000 m in the Arctic. (Courtesy of Kevin Raskoff, Monterey Peninsula College)

"Discoveries include a tubeworm that drills for oil in seeps at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, and then eats it"