Last month, a team of 21 scientists began searching for new species in the waters east of New Zealand.
By March 9, they had discovered 100 new species, a number that has grown since then. Alex Rogers, a marine biologist who led the expedition, noted that the number of new species identified would “increase as we work through more and more of the samples. That number is going to be in the hundreds instead of just 100.”
Dozens of mollusks, three fish, a shrimp and a predatory cephalopod were among the first species found in the waters of Bounty Trough, located east of New Zealand’s South Island. South Island is the the larger of the two main islands comprising New Zealand.
The expedition was orchestrated by Ocean Census, a nonprofit dedicated to the global discovery of ocean life, with support from New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research.
One animal whose discovery caused a “lot of head-scratching” is star-shaped, and about half an inch across, but researchers have not been able to classify it. It may conceivably be a form of coral.
More than two million species are thought to live in the oceans, but only a tenth of all ocean life has been identified. Dr. Rogers says it is critically important to learn more about such aquatic life forms to understand marine ecosystems that provide essential food supplies and shape the climate.
“We’re dealing with a situation where we know marine life is in decline,” he said. “In order to try to manage human activities to prevent this continuing decline, we need to understand the distribution of marine life better than we currently do.”
As a news report explains:
Ocean Census was founded last year by the Nippon Foundation, a Japanese philanthropic organization, and the U.K.-based ocean exploration foundation Nekton. When it began its work, Ocean Census set a goal of finding at least 100,000 new marine species in a decade.
The group is focused on exploring some of the most under-sampled bodies of water.
In the February expedition, researchers first mapped the area with an imaging system and video cameras…
Then, they deployed what is known as the Brenke sled, a sampling device that has two nets, one close to the seabed, and the other a meter above it. As it drags along the floor, it churns up animals living close to the sea floor. To find larger animals, the researchers used other methods, such as baited nets.
Trawling the depths at 4,800 meters — or roughly the equivalent to Mont Blanc, the highest peak in the Alps — researchers collected 1,791 samples.
Given its depth, Bounty Trough is not of great interest to fisheries and therefore is poorly sampled, Dr. Rogers said. Geologists have surveyed this area but biologists have not.
Worldwide, about 240,000 marine species have been discovered and named to date but only 2,200 species are discovered each year on average, according to Ocean Census.
