![]() ![]() Maybe this time a shark swims through your section of water, and you spot one or two other new creatures.Īs you go on repeating this process, Horton says, you will tend find fewer and fewer new species. Then go back a second time and do it again, making a note of the number of species that you didn't see there before. Perhaps you see a few crustaceans clinging to a seafloor boulder, several species of fish darting around, and a couple of sediment-feeders embedded in the silty seafloor. There are, in fact, several ways that scientists can estimate how many unknown species there are still to be discovered, says Tammy Horton, a taxonomist and ocean biodiversity researcher at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, UK.įor instance, imagine taking one small patch of water sitting above the ocean floor a few miles out from the coast, and recording how many new species you find there. But with new methods of ocean exploration, we are getting closer than ever to discovering more of the ocean's giants.Īfter centuries of ocean exploration, how do we know that we haven't found all the sizeable ocean animals already? As deep-sea mining threatens to encroach on previously untouched seafloor habitats and climate change warms and acidifies the seas, the ocean's ecosystems are on the brink of profound change. The race to try to find the remaining species is growing urgent. When you consider smaller animals too, the number of unknown species rises to the millions.įrom 13m-long (43ft) voracious carnivorous squid, to scuttling Yeti crabs huddling near hydrothermal vents, to tusked whales dwelling thousands of feet down to avoid predatory orcas, sizeable marine animals new to science are still being documented every year. Oceans make up roughly 99.5% of the planet's habitats by volume, and within those largely unexplored depths there are thought to be scores of large marine animals unknown to science. The massive shark generated headlines in January 2019 when she was spotted off Oahu, feeding on a sperm whale carcass.If the Earth's oceans were the size of the island of Manhattan, then oceanographer and deep-sea explorer Edith Widder estimates that we've explored the equivalent of perhaps one block – but only at first-floor level. The photo atop this post is a screen shot from footage captured at Guadalupe Island, shared to Facebook by Mexican researcher Mauricio Hoyos Padilla in 2015.ĭomeier on Wednesday told For The Win Outdoors: “As a mature female, Deep Blue likely returns to Guadalupe Island every two years during the mating season, but she is rarely sighted.” “So she’s an old, beautiful shark, but no one can unequivocally claim she is biggest Great White in the sea.”ĭeep Blue, estimated to measure about 21 feet, became famous after being featured by Discovery in 2014 (with footage captured in 2013). ”ĭomeier’s team first documented Deep Blue in 1999 “and she was already big back then,” he continued. The scientist, who has studied great white sharks extensively at Mexico’s Guadalupe Island and off California, added: “I have personally seen two massive sharks that could definitely exceed Deep Blue in size, one at the Farallones and one near Pt. ![]() That’s never happened.”ĪLSO ON FTW OUTDOORS: Yellowstone bison can’t fly, despite what it seems “That would require being physically laid out next to a tape measure or photographed while being painted with a precisely calibrated paired laser system. Michael Domeier Deep Blue has never been scientifically measured or weighed,” Domeier wrote. ![]()
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