A team of 21 scientists embarked on an expedition into the largely uncharted waters of the Bounty Trough off the coast of New Zealand’s South Island in February, hoping to find a treasure trove of new species.
The expedition paid off, they said Sunday, with the discovery of 100 new species, a number that was likely to rise, said Alex Rogers, a marine biologist who led the expedition.
“I expect that number to increase as we process more and more samples,” Dr. Rogers said. “I think that number will be in the hundreds instead of just 100.”
Dozens of molluscs, three fish, a shrimp and a cephalopod that is a type of predatory mollusk were among the new species found on the mission, which was led by Ocean Census, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the global discovery of ocean life, the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research in New Zealand and the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.
One creature that caused “a lot of head scratching” is a star-shaped animal, about one centimeter across, but researchers have been unable to identify it, Dr Rogers said. They think it might be coral.
Over two million species are estimated to live in the oceans, but only 10 percent of ocean life is known. It is vital to learn more about aquatic life because marine ecosystems perform functions that support life on Earth, such as creating food for billions, storing carbon and regulating the climate, Dr Rogers said.
“We’re dealing with a situation where we know marine life is in decline,” he said. “To try to manage human activities to prevent this continued decline, we need to understand the distribution of marine life better than we do today.”
The Ocean Census was founded last year by the Nippon Foundation, a Japanese charity, and the UK-based ocean exploration foundation Nekton. When it began its work, the Ocean Census set a goal of finding at least 100,000 new marine species in a decade.
The team is focused on exploring some of the unsampled water bodies.
On the February mission, the researchers first mapped the area with an imaging system and video cameras to check it would be safe for their equipment and to ensure there were no vulnerable animal communities that could be damaged.
They then developed what is known as the Brenke sled, a sampling device that has two nets, one near the bottom and the other a meter above it. As it crawls along the floor, it stirs up animals that live near the bottom of the sea. To find larger animals, researchers used other methods, such as baited nets.
Trawling the depths at 4,800 meters – or about the equivalent of Mont Blanc, the highest peak in the Alps – the researchers collected 1,791 samples.
Given its depth, the Bounty Trough is of little interest to fisheries and is therefore under-sampled, Dr Rogers said. Geologists have investigated this area, but biologists have not.
Worldwide, about 240,000 marine species have been discovered and named to date, but only 2,200 species are discovered each year on average, according to the Ocean Census.
In many bodies of water there is still much for scientists to learn, Dr Rogers said.
“It’s probably the equivalent of a space mission,” he said. “It’s still early days, but the number of species we found in the Bounty Trough really shows us that we have a long way to go in terms of understanding where life is in the ocean.”
