Census Of Marine Life: Decade-Long International Effort Completed, Shows Connectedness Of Oceanic Creatures Across The World (PHOTOS)

WASHINGTON — The world’s oceans may be vast and deep, but a decade-long count of marine animals finds sea life so interconnected that it seems to shrink the watery world.

An international effort to create a Census of Marine Life was completed Monday with maps and three books, increasing the number of counted and validated species to 201,206.

A decade ago the question of how many species are out there couldn’t be answered. It also could have led to a lot of arguments among scientists. Some species were counted several or even dozens of times, said Jesse Ausubel of the Alfred Sloan Foundation, the co-founder of the effort that involved 2,700 scientists.

The $650 million project got money and help from more than 600 groups, including various governments, private foundations, corporations, non-profits, universities, and even five high schools. The Sloan foundation is the founding sponsor, contributing $75 million.

But what scientists learned was more than a number or a count. It was a sense of how closely life connects from one place to another and one species to another, Ausubel said.

Take the bizarre and minuscule shrimp-like creature called Ceratonotus steiningeri. It has several spikes and claws and looks intimidating – if it weren’t a mere two-hundredths of an inch long. Five years ago this critter had never been seen before. No one knew of its existence.

Then, off the Atlantic coast of Africa as part of the census, it was found at a depth of more than three miles below the surface. It was one of 800 species found in that research trip, said discoverer Pedro Martinez Arbizu, a department head at the German Centre for Marine Biodiversity Research.

He was astonished to find that the tiny creature also was within the cataloging he’d made earlier 8,000 miles away in the central Pacific.

There was that critter again. Same shrimpy creature, different ocean.

“We were really very, very surprised about that,” Arbizu said in an interview. “We think this species has a very broad distribution area.”

In that way, Ceratonotus steiningeri exemplifies what the census found.

“We didn’t know so much about the deep sea…,” Arbizu said. “We believe now that the deep sea is more connected, also the different oceans, than we previously thought.”

The census also describes a species of strange large squid that was only recently found in waters more than 3,000 feet deep. The 23-foot-long squid has large fins with arms and tentacles that have elbow-like bends. Scientists had seen it in larvae form before, but not in its full-blown glory until it was filmed at depth.

The census also highlighted marine life that makes commutes that put a suburban worker’s daily grind to shame. Before the census started, the migration of the Pacific bluefin tuna had not been monitored much. But by tagging a 33-pound tuna, scientists found that it crossed the Pacific three times in just 600 days, according to Stanford University‘s Barbara Block. A different species of tuna, the Atlantic bluefin, migrates about 3,700 miles between North America and Europe. Humpback whales do a nearly 5,000 mile north-south migration.

Still, that’s nothing compared to the sea bird that Ian Poiner of Australia studies.

He studied puffins that make a nearly 40,000-mile circle every year from New Zealand to Japan, Russia, Alaska, Chile and back in what the census calls the “longest-ever electronically recorded migration.”

Other species, such as plankton and even seals, travel great lengths, but stay in the same part of the ocean. They travel thousands of feet between the surface into the depths of the oceans. The scientists measured elephant seals that dived about 1.5 miles, Ausubel said.

The census found another more basic connection in the genetic blueprint of life. Just as chimps and humans share more than 95 percent of their DNA, the species of the oceans have most of their DNA in common, too. Among fish in general, the snippets of genetic code that scientists have analyzed suggest only about a 2 to 15 percent difference, said Dirk Steinke, lead scientist for marine barcoding at the University of Guelph in Canada.

“Although these are really old species of fish, there’s not much that separates them,” Steinke said.

PHOTOS of discoveries from the Census’ decade of research:

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

[slideshow id=72]

Below the caption for each slide:

1- This undated handout photo provided by the Census for Marine Life shows a dragonfish that even has teeth on its tongue. They would be terrifying animals if they weren’t the size of a banana. (AP Photo/Dr. Julian Finn, Museum Victoria, Census for Marine Life)
2- This undated handout photo provided the Census of Marine Life, shows a new copepod, Ceratonotus steiningeri, that was first discovered 5,400 meters deep in the Angola Basin in 2006. Within a year it was also collected in the southeastern Atlantic, as well as as in the central Pacific Ocean. Scientists are puzzled about how this tiny animal achieved such widespread distribution as they are about how it avoided detection for so long. (AP Photo/Jan Michels, Census of Marine Life)
3- In this undated photo released by the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Census of Marine Life, is shown a ghost-like sea-angel, platybrachium antarcticum, going through the deep Antarctic waters hunting the shelled pteropods (another type of snail) on which it feeds. (AP Photo/University of Alaska Fairbanks, Census of Marine Life, Russ Hopcroft)
4- This undated handout photo provided by the Census of Marine Life shows a Kiwa hirsuta, the Yeti crab, a new species found near Easter Island. Credit: (AP Photo/Ifremer, A. Fifis)
5- In this undated photo released by the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Census of Marine Life, is shown a nemertean pelagonemertes rollestoni hunting for zooplankton prey that it will harpoon with a dart attached to the tongue coiled within it. Its yellow stomach reaches out to feed all parts of the body. (AP Photo/University of Alaska Fairbanks, Census of Marine Life, Russ Hopcroft)
6- This undated handout image provided by the Census of Marine Life shows, the acantharians are one of the four types of large amoebae that occur in marine open waters. Their fragile skeletons are made of a single crystal of strontium sulfate that quickly dissolves in the ocean water after the cell dies. If the Census Bureau thinks it has it;s hands full counting Americans, imagine the problems of scientists trying to tally everything living in the oceans, including microbes so small they seem invisible. (AP Photo/Bob Andersen and D. J. Patterson, Census of Marine Life)
7- In this undated photo released by the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Census of Marine Life, is shown a sand-flea hyperoche capucinus, a common predator swimming in polar waters. (AP Photo/University of Alaska Fairbanks, Census of Marine Life, Russ Hopcroft)
8-In this undated photo released by the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Census of Marine Life, is shown a marble-sized jellyfish, calycopsis borchgrevinki, which is one of the more common hydromedusae encountered in Antarctic waters. (AP Photo/University of Alaska Fairbanks, Census of Marine Life, Russ Hopcroft)
9- This undated handout photo provided by the Census for Marine Life shows the Sargassum Fish (Histrio histrio), a member of the frogfish family (Antennariidae), a group of small, globular fishes with stalked, grasping, limb-like pectoral fins with small gill openings behind the base, a trapdoor-like mouth high on the head, and a “fishing lure” (formed by the first dorsal spine) on the snout. It typically lives in open waters in close association with floating Sargassum Weed (Sargassum natans and S. fluitans), but is frequently blown into nearshore and bay waters during storms. Although the Sargassum Fish is capable of swimming quite rapidly, it often crawls through the Sargassum Weed, using its pectoral fins like arms. (AP Photo/Census for Marine Life)
10- In this undated photo released by the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Census of Marine Life, is shown a chionodraco hamatus, one of the Antarctic’s ice fish, which can withstand temperatures that freeze the blood of all other types of fish. (AP Photo/University of Alaska Fairbanks, Census of Marine Life, Russ Hopcroft)
11- In this undated photo released by the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Census of Marine Life, is shown a bean-sized swimming snail, limacina helicina, occurring in both Arctic and Antarctic waters. It spins a mucus-net off its paddle-like foot-wings to trap algae and other small particles on which it feeds. (AP Photo/University of Alaska Fairbanks, Census of Marine Life, Russ Hopcroft)
12-In this undated photo released by the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Census of Marine Life, is shown a shell-less pteropod or swimming snail, clione limacina, found in both Arctic and Antarctic waters, which preys exclusively on its fellow shelled pteropods. (AP Photo/University of Alaska Fairbanks, Census of Marine Life, Russ Hopcroft)
13- This undated handout image provided by the Census of Marine Life shows, Prorocentrum, an unusual dinoflagellate with two large valves, often marked with pores which can be used in the identification of species. Two cells, showing the golden color of the plastids. If the Census Bureau thinks it has it;s hands full counting Americans, imagine the problems of scientists trying to tally everything living in the oceans, including microbes so small they seem invisible. (AP Photo/Bob Andersen and D. J. Patterson, Census of Marine Life)
14-A new species of grenadiers (aka rattails), Caelorinchus mediterraneus, found in the western Mediterranean, is one of a rapidly growing list of more than 15,300 marine fish species now logged in the Census of Marine Life database. (AP Photo/Census of Marine Life, Tomio Iwamoto)
15-A new species of grenadiers (aka rattails), Ventrifossa paxtoni, found in the Tasman Sea, is one of a rapidly growing list of more than 15,300 marine fish species now logged in the Census of Marine Life database. (AP Photo/Census of Marine Life, Ken Graham)