by Playfuls Staff |
5th May 2006
The result of a voyage which was part of the ongoing Census of Marine Life (CoML) that has the purpose of mapping ocean life throughout the world has been the discovery of about 10 to 20 new species of small creatures living in the depths of the Atlantic Ocean. [more]
As many as 28 scientists from 14 nations including Argentina, Australia, Britain, Canada, China, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey and the United States took part in the voyage.
"This was a voyage of exploration... the deepest parts of the oceans are hardly ever sampled", said Peter Wiebe, the scientific leader of the expedition and senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the United States.
These newly found creatures include about six types of copepods and ostracods (a creature which resembles shrimps), jellyfish-like delicate creatures, some swimming snails, worms, one previously unknown type of black dragonfish with fang-like 40cm-long upward-growing teeth and a 20cm-long great swallower with wide jaws and a light-producing organ ment to help him attract its prey.
Researchers also want to see the effects that pollution and global warming in general have on the oceanic life, as well as sequence the creatures' DNA in order to get a more accurate image of their constitution and characteristics.
