“Census of Marine life released”

There has been an increase in new emerging marine life. According to the Census of Marine Life (COML), the latest inventory of species contains the most diverse marine life ever recorded. Researchers suggest that these oceans still aren’t well documented and that there are still marine life that remain undiscovered. According to scientists findings for every one marine life that is documented there are three or four more species undiscovered. This leads to the suspicion that our knowledge on the oceans ecosystem is not that accurate. IN fact it reveals that “less than five percent of the ocean has been explored”, says Sylvia Earle.

This scientific research relates to ecology. Since many of the oceans species still remain undiscovered and undocumented we have acquired little knowledge on what the ocean life is really like. The COML only documents a fraction of the marine life that really exists in the ocean. Scientist Shirley says “since we don’t know all the species, we don’t know their ecological roles.” This can lead to a gap in the marine life information.

This research is important because if more than half of the ocean remains undiscovered our information is scarce and may be unreliable because we don’t have a full understanding on the oceans ecosystem. “Every species is a wheel or cog in a big complex watch,” says Shirley. “Start removing those little pieces and you get a cascading effect and start losing function.”