Brilliant Pics of Bizarre Sea Critters

An anonymous reader writes "Today, scientists have announced the completion of the first ever Census of Marine Life. The colossal 10-year effort involved 2,700 researchers from 80 countries. To mark the occasion, Discover's blog 80beats has a photo gallery of some of the most marvelously strange sea creatures photographed in the course of the census. The blog post also explains some of the census's most important findings, including the dramatic decline of many commercially important large marine animals, and troubling new evidence of a decline in the phytoplankton that serves as the base of the marine food chain."

Comments

It amazes me

[LiquidLink57]

We seem to want to look toward space, toward distant planets trying to find even scant evidence of strange, spectacular creatures. And yet ones as strange and spectacular as you can imagine remain undiscovered right here at home.

Re:It amazes me

[Monchanger]

I think that depends on one's definition of "strange". Sure there's definitely room for marine biologists, physicists and chemists to learn from creatures inhabiting the deep. But all these newly discovered lifeforms are, as strange as they seem, still just distant cousins, restricted to evolutionary limitations. Glibly put, there are only so many fields which care about yet one more species of jellyfish.

Scientific knowledge would grow by leaps and bounds with something truly alien. They'll settle for unrelated carbon-based life, but would love to study something which doesn't even have that in common. Other fields of science would absolutely love locating sentient life. I'm not sure how much spending that's worth, but it's far from worthless.

coml.org images

[slshwtw]

coml.org Image Gallery (since for some reason I can't seem to find where the pictures are on the discover blog)

Already Sladshdotted! Here's a CORAL link

[Announcer]

I'm glad I got this just in time! Here is the CORAL link to this:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com.nyud.net/80beats/2010/10/04/first-marine-census-describes-the-wonders-and-troubles-of-the-seas/

Re:How can a "first ever" census...

[Monchanger]

Because it's not a census-wide decline:

including the dramatic decline of many commercially important large marine animals

Content is shared with the Encyclopedia of Life

[Chuckles08]

Another great thing about the Census is that much of the information is feeding into the Encyclopedia of Life project (www.eol.org) with the content being shared under a Creative Commons license.