It was determine we do n’t know enough about the ocean . So 2,700 scientists started the Census of Marine Life , cooperating with museums , labs and aquariums across 80 state to check more . 10 years afterwards , today , they ’re done .
The census used every imaginable form of technology to get the job done , from Satellites , to manned and unmanned subs , to divers with camera , to gyroscopic and GPS sensor slapped onto the backs of wight . They discover a “ riot of lifespan ” everywhere from beaches to the skies above the sea to the bass ocean where undersea vent and outlet hot enough to meld lead still hosted ecosystem . They find 6,000 new species of life , many that are astoundingly uneven . And even chance some variety of life that were thought to be extinct . But what ’s most interesting to me is how they managed to track large bodies of fish , sometimes in large schools , sometimes individually , across grand of land mile .
Census scientist at some point tried to measure the ocean bed using sonar , only to see readings varying wildly . They realized that they were seem at a school of billion of Atlantic Clupea harangus . The size of it of Manhattan .
The scientists also used acoustic tags and seabed sensor scatter between Alaska and California to track the migrations of 18 species more than 3,000 kilometer in the pacific , note the exact passages of individual trout , some as lowly as bananas .
These encounters were log into a tumid database call OBIS , or , Ocean Biogeographic Information System , which has about 30 million ledger entry on metal money and where they exist .
The rest is summarized in a 64 page PDF , which sound longsighted but consider the vast sum of money of findings the Census has uncovered , hardly seems to do the project justice .
But what ’s also notable is that even after 10 years of study , the Census estimates that there is still over 20 % of the volume of the sea for which absolutely no data point has been memorialize . And that for all the fish we ’re counting , 90 % of the world ’s biomass is microscopical .
We have a lot to acquire , but we have protrude studying and we have the toys to make solid progress .
[ Census , OBIS , anda collection of the most interesting creatures come upon by the Census at Scuttlefish . ]
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