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| Screenshot photo of the website of Census of Marine Life (CoML) on Oct. 5, 2010. (Xinhuanet Photo) |
LONDON, Oct. 4 (Xinhua) -- After a decade of joint work and expeditions at sea, marine researchers released the final reports of the first Census of Marine Life (CoML) in London on Monday, which is hailed as a milestone or landmark for marine science.
Gathering in the Royal Institution in London, the researchers released three books and a relatively short "Highlights of a Decade of Discovery", which summarizes some 2,600 academic papers published by some 2,700 census scientists from more than 80 countries since CoML started in 2000.
"The Census of Marine Life will be a major milestone for marine science," said Ian Poiner who chairs the CoML Scientific Steering Committee.
He told Xinhua that more than 6,000 likely new species were collected and await formal description during the census, of which researchers has directly collected and formally described about 1,200.
That increases the estimated number of known marine species to about 250,000, which is a count of marine animals and not including plants and microbes.
Based on the findings, it is estimated the total number of species in the ocean would be over a million, which "has systematically defined for the first time both the known and the vast unknown, unexpected ocean," according to Poiner.
All the information was integrated into the Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS), the biggest ever database of marine life.
