NEW YORK: After centuries of science and exploration, you might think we know just about all there is to know about the planet we inhabit. But in the last year alone, scientists have discovered 1,451 new species in our oceans, according to an international audit of the seas published today. The marine creatures include weird and wonderful beasts from the deepest, darkest oceans, microscopic shrimp from coastal caves and even two new types of dolphin.
Marine explorers off the coast of Australia discovered the venomous ‘Keesingia gigas’ jellyfish last summer – long as a man’s arm and powerful enough to kill a human.
The ‘star-gazer’ shrimp was found in the seas off South Africa, with striped eyes fixed on top of its tiny red body, seemingly staring at the heavens. And in 2014 biologists identified two new species of dolphin – one found near Papua New Guinea and the other in a Brazilian river – both of which are already threatened by fishermen. Despite the expansion of our knowledge however, scientists estimate we still only know about a tenth of the marine life on Earth.
The World Register of Marine Species – which aims to become an inventory of all known ocean life – numbers 228,000 species, with new names being added every day.
But scientists estimate there could eventually be two million on the list as our knowledge of the oceans grows. Over the last eight years since the project started, scientists have pored over records, examined historic journals, and poked and prodded the bodies of mysterious creatures of the deep. After countless hours of research, they have found we know only a fraction of the fish, whales and sharks swimming around our shores, or the squid and shrimp found in the darkest reaches of our oceans.
