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.

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/

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.