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600 New Species of Fish Discovered
zenobr writes "Some 300 scientists from 53 countries are creating a record of all known marine life, in a project reminiscent of an aquatic Domesday Book. So far more than 15,000 species of fish have been catalogued and 2 to 3 thousand more are expected to be catalogued before the project's end in 2010. Over 500 of the fish catalogued thus far are thought to be new to science. Full story on BBC News"
I wonder how many fish they thought to be extinct they'll find doing this . . .
Will I retire or break 10K?
How long have these scientists been keeping these fish TO THEMSELVES???
Maybe they didn't mean Doomsday book. Maybe it should have been DOMESDAY book. The Domesday book was basically a census ordered by William the Conquerer about 20 years after the invasion.
You can find out more at:
http://www.domesdaybook.co.uk/
The Domesday Book was the complete account of the lands and people of the nation of England undertaken by William the Conqueror in 1085-86. It bears no resemblance to the science fiction novel cited in the link.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Tartar Sauce technology is just not keeping up! I'm going to sponsor open sauce recipies at SauceForge.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is not suficiently advanced.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
Species are defined as being unable to cross breed a viable offspring. There is only one species of dog, but many subspecies, which gets many people confused. Collie and German shepard are subspecies, Dog (canis familiaris) is the species.
When life gives you crap, Make Crapade.
Sluggy Freelance.
You gotta love a man who has to get a book made just to know what he owns.
Thats only half the problem. Most fish change drastically from youth to adulthood. Here in Hawaii and I know in Japan, we call the a young fish one name and an adult another and they don't look anything like each other. I bet at least some of the count of the species is because they couldn't find enough specimens to follow the lifespan of the fish.
Are there recipes to go with all of these new fish?
Thanks for all the fish!
Let loose all those obscure Lovecraft refrences.
If we don't make light of everything, we are just stumbling in the dark - Blank
They've got 150 more to taste. Reports so far include 300 taste like chicken, and a few mysterious 'Tasty Wheats' flavoured oddities.
Refuse to make a statement in your sig!
"Farmer John: 10 Cows, 20 Chickens, 1 house, 1 Wife, 6 kids
Farmer Paul: 20 Cows, 15 Chickens, 1 house, 1 Wife, 10 kids..."
Wait a minute...
From Wikipedia.org
It's getting deep in here! This story just doesn't hold water and it won't scale (imagine a beo... nope, too corny even for me). By the time we see the tail end of this one, it'll smell pretty fishy. I think the data has been salted. Whoever believes this one is smoking a lot of sea weed, and personally I've had enough to make my head swim! I think this needs to be sent to a watery grave before the sharks catch the smell.
>> *shoots self for being so stupid*
Me first!!
Just think what this will do for the menu at Long John Silvers!
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
It would be interesting to estimate the total number of species of fish based on the trajectory of species counts. The trajectory probably follows some x% of remaining species are discovered on a yearly basis. A bit of linear regression on a transform of the species counts by year and a bit of calculus should provide a reasonable extrapolation.
Of course a simple analytic model would probably not be accurate for a number of reasons. I am sure there are wastersheds that have not been adequately explored that harbor substantive numbers of unknown species (e.g., Burma). There's also the problem of duplicates. Then there are extinctions of both previously discovered and never-to-be discovered species.
I know, I know, there's probably several papers in the academic literature on this and I'm just too lazy to look them up. But its fun to think about.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Emeril's latest book, "600 New Ways to Serve Fish" has just gone on sale.
fish heads, roley poley fish heads, eat 500 more, yum. :)
--
Now we have a ton of new fish for O'Reilly to stipple and use for cover art!
Worldwide, in the last few years, I have seen several estimations on how many species wait to be discovered, prepared by various organizations of Taxonomists, Biologists, and such. These are always much larger than the general public expects. There are probably no more than a few large mammals, at very most, awaiting discovery, but there may be 100,000 species of insects not yet categorized, and there are probably a thousand types of birds, hundreds of frogs and thousands of amphibians and reptiles, and possibly as many as a dozen rodents. It's even been proposed that there are still over 50 large (not bacteria sized) parasites on humans that have never been entered into a textbook. Overall, we may know as little as 15% of all species, and it appears dead certain the best possible number is less than 1/2. I'm not going to document all this in detail, but sites such as www.bottomquark.com have a few archived articles for those wanting to check the deplorable situation in taxonomy out.
Who is John Cabal?
Actually, this isn't the case. Species are simply populations that *tend* not to breed together -- for example, dogs (Canis familiaris), wolves (Canis lupus) and coyotes (Canis latrans) can breed together just fine and produce viable offspring, but because matings are relatively rare, they are still counted as separate species.
Well, the first thing you have to learn about taxonomy is that stripes and dots don't count. Ever see the stripes and dots on a dinosaur? Neither has anyone else.
Form, not color. A rose by any other color is still a rose.
Taxonomically speaking the only difference between an Atlantic Salmon and a Rainbow Trout ( which has different colored dots and its famous red stripe) is. . . two teeth.
(Yes, for those taking notes, that means that the Rainbow Trout is really the Pacific Salmon and the "Pacific Salmon" aren't. The Brook Trout and the Lake Trout aren't trout or salmon. They're Char. That's what happens when you let the "people" name things before the taxonomists get there).
KFG
They "real" science you want will be affected later in all sorts of ways...now that they have many more samples & ideas to draw from when looking for new cures for diseases.
As much as non-biological science people think we know about the organisms on this planet, we really don't know jack. The reason we are always finding more species is a result of two different phases of taxonomic research; Alpha and Beta. Alpha taxonomy is that basic, initial "I found this and it is different" phase. Usually, this happens in relatively unexplored areas (such as the oceans), or in relatively unexplored groups of organisms, such as Oomycetes or Tropical microlepidoptera (or in fishes). There really are a lot of places filled with organisms previously unknown to science. For example, I am currently describing three new species of ferns from Cuba, one from Jamaica, and five from the Chaco of Paraguay and Bolivia. Humans don't know everything.
A lot of species today are found through further taxonomic research (i.e., Beta taxonomy). For example, many taxa are morphologically very similar, but genetically disparate. Each year in the United States a large number of species are discovered because of this type of research.
And to those who may think that there is something wrong or shocking that we keep finding new species, just stop to think about how many people actually do this kind of research. For example, I study fern systematics, and there are less than 20 people who are actively doing this research in the world. When you get in to many animal groups, the ratio of species to scientists is much worse, so we will be discovering new species for a very long time, unless of course we wipe them all out!
And what do you mean you don't get to name the species you discover? Of course you do, that's how they get named!
The aquatic ecosystem is important for food and recreation. But fish populations are under stress worldwide. In the Netherlands, workers used to get their employers to provide lunch, but negotiated the maximum number of times per week salmon would be served. They couldn't get an employer to pay for salmon anymore.
In North America, the Atlantic salmon is a farm FrankenFish, fed Fish Pellets until they are big and then pumped full of carrot extract to get that "natural" orange color before processing.
While some of these species may seem insignificant, it is important to catalog and understand them to assess the health and viability of ecosystems.
Then again, the whole world is slaughtering fish in the oceans to the point that the most productive fisheries are under serious pressure. So if we can wipe out ubiquitous species, how can we hope to preserve those in sensitive habitats that come under pressure?
Well, at least we will have some descriptions and pictures.
Just 2 cents from a catch and release, barbless hooks fly fisher.
Actually, there are 200 fish species described as new every year. And it has been like that for the last twenty years. BTW, check out www.fishbase.org, the best site there is on fish. H.U.G.E. database.
:) No, I won't tell you their name; please, let G3ck0G33k have some his mysteries of his own. :)
Oh, some bragging rights on behalf of myself... I have described three new fish species myself; giving them scientific names and all that.
True, we are discovering new species all of the time, but there are several reasons why.
The first is that classifications are always changing. Scientists are always finding new methods/means to further divide an existing group of organisms based on some structure (existence of bones, arrangement of bones, habitat differentiation, etc.).
If I remember correctly, during one lecture a professor mentioned that two fish, virtually identical in outward appearance, lived within several feet vertically of each other, but for some reason I can't remember now, someone caught some of each, dissected them and found that they were different enough internally to classify them as two separate species.
Second, the total number of fishes believed to be in existence as of 1993 - 1994, was around 22,000 to 24,000. So at 15,000 catalogued so far, we still have a ways to go even with finding several hundred new species a year. Remember, we know more about the surface of the moon than we do about the deep ocean.
Also, one of the graduate students in Marine Biology that I knew found 2 or 3 new species during his thesis work.
So, it's not that the scientists are not doing their job, it's just that the system used to classify species developed by Carl Linnaeus is being modified when some new specie is found and this can cause other species to be reclassified. Kind of like a ripple effect.
By the way, you do get to name the new species that you find with a few simple rules. You can't name it after yourself and it must pass through a standards committee.
Rejoice in your insanity, there really is no other way