EnglishEarlier this month, the first ever Census of Marine Life was published, a culmination of a decade of research. Nearly three thousand scientists from around the world worked together to establish an oceanic baseline for future study.
The census includes over 240,000 marine species (presumed to be 25% of the total number of species in the worlds oceans) and has three points of focus:
- diversity
- distribution
- abundance
“The census found life everywhere we looked,” Ian Poiner, chairman of the scientific steering committee, told Science, ” and it is much more complex and interconnected than we expected. Probably the other [key finding] is that we humans have had far more impact on the oceans than we had imagined.”
We look forward to further studies from this bottom-up approach to conservation science and will continue to empower citizen scientists and advance our own understanding of the marine ecosystems in the region where we work.