Is there anything in the ocean that we have not discovered?

[agilis]

Jimmy Hoffa

 

[Akimbo]

“Is there anything in the ocean that we have not discovered?”

Nope, nothing at all… at least until someone proves me wrong. But that was true 200 years ago.

 

[tursiops]

Silly me. I thought the OP was a serious question. I should have known better. Duh.

 

[mathauck0814]

Is this a serious post? When we were in Anilao in November, the University of Hawaii team led by Richard Pyle (were very coincidentally staying at the same resort we were - presumably because it was the only one in Anilao that supported rebreathers) discovered more than a dozen undocumented species in just the week of overlap we had with them.

My very uneducated guess is that we haven't even got the majority of it sorted out yet.

 

[Wingy]

New species seem to be discovered on a daily basis.

I just saw a short movie from the Smithsonian Institute where they taged a 14 foot great white shark, the tag washed up on shore a short time later, they examined the data the tag collected and it showed the shark shortly after being tagged swam around for a week or so, they watched the temperatures recorded and postulated that it went deep then suddenly the waters around the shark went from something like 40 degrees to 78 degrees and stayed at that temperature for another week and the location moved up and down thousands of feet and over a distance of miles...

... the conclusion was the sudden change from 40 to 78 degrees and that the temperature stayed constant no matter the location or depth indicated the tag recording the inside body temperature of another marine animal, in other words the 14 foot great white was eaten by something and the something then swam around up and down for over a week before it pooped or spit out the tag.

There is currently no known species that would eat a 14 foot great white....

CSIRO scientists who did the tagging on that particular shark here have concluded she was eaten by another bigger great white. Orcas were thrown around as a possibility but due to the temperature remaining constant the consensus is another, bigger, white.

New species terrestrial and aquatic are discovered and named every day - we cant even get to the greater depths to find out whats down there yet....Id like to think there is a lot of big and small stuff yet to be named.

 

[boulderjohn]

I recently took a marine biology textbook and converted it to a web basis for online deliver. Here are two items I remember:

1. We have so far explored 3% of the ocean.

2. We had sections on important marine biologists, and the one on Richard Pyle said his team was averaging 11 new species for every hour of bottom time.

 

[CAPTAIN SINBAD]

Thanks for the info guys. So how do we go about documenting new species?

 

[mathauck0814]

Thanks for the info guys. So how do we go about documenting new species?

You go on expeditions with the oceanographic institutes doing the research.

You're posing the questions as though they aren't already well understood.