WASHINGTON: Scientists identified almost 1,500 new creatures in the world’s oceans last year, including a humpbacked dolphin and a giant jellyfish, and reckon that most species of marine life are yet to be found.
The experts publishing their findings recently listed a total of 228,450 marine species worldwide, ranging from seaweeds to blue whales, and estimated that between 500,000 and 2 million more multi-celled marine organisms were still unknown.
“The deep sea has been poorly explored so far,” Jan Mees, co-chair of the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS), told Reuters.
Many species were likely to go extinct – due to pollution, climate change and acidification – before they were even found, he said.
For 2014, the project identified 1,451 new marine species – about four a day – including the Australian humpback dolphin, 139 sponges, a South African “star-gazing shrimp” and a giant, venomous, tentacle-free box jellyfish about 50 cm (20 inches) long found off Australia.
Since the WoRMS project began in 2008, it has also listed about 1,000 new types of fish – including a combined total of 122 sharks and rays, and a new barracuda in the Mediterranean sea. There are now about 18,000 known species of fish.
Marine life can have big economic value – sponges and molluscs are among species that have yielded cancer-fighting agents.
Mees, director of the Flanders Marine Institute in Belgium where WoRMS is based, said marine prospecting for “blue biotechnology” around volcanic vents on the seabed could also help develop materials resistant to heat and toxins.
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