Los
Angeles Times: The first comprehensive effort to identify
and catalog every species in the world's oceans, from microbes
to blue whales, is a year from completion. But early
discoveries have profoundly altered understanding of life
beneath the sea.New tracking tools, for example, show that some
bluefin tuna migrate between Los Angeles and Yokohama, Japan;
one tagged tuna crossed the Pacific three times in a year.
White sharks forage even farther for food, commuting between
Australia and South Africa.Since the $650-million, decade-long
project began in May 2000, researchers have used deep-sea
robots, laser-based radar and super-sensitive sonar that can
track fish 90 miles away.Census teams also embarked on about
400 shipboard expeditions. They discovered life forms faster
than they could verify and name—more than 5,600 suspected
new species so far, many from the hottest, coldest, saltiest
and deepest parts of the oceans.
