According to a new report in Mail Online, there are as many as one million marine species. Biologists have named nearly 226,000 out of 65,000 specimens.
Oceans are vast and still holds many secrets. In the last decade, researchers have described more species than to the decade before that. They claim that the most of the undiscovered species group is made up of smaller crustaceans, mollusks, worms, and sponges and are destined to discover them by the end of this century.
According to a report published in Planetsave, Ward Appeltans of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO said "For the first time, we can provide a very detailed overview of species richness, partitioned among all major marine groups. It is the state of the art of what we know - and perhaps do not know - about life in the ocean."
"Earlier estimates of ocean diversity had relied on expert polls based on extrapolations from past rates of species descriptions and other measures," he said. "Those estimates varied widely, suffering because there was no global catalog of marine species."
An Inventory has been created to keep up to date information about any new species discovered. It includes 270 experts who represent 146 institutions and 32 countries. Appeltans and his colleagues from the University of Auckland named the inventory "World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS)," which is an open access online database, according to a press release published in Eurekalert.
Mark Costello who was also played a part in building this inventory recalls: "Building this was not as simple as it should be, because there has not been any formal way to register species."
"A particular problem is the occurrence of multiple descriptions and names for the same species-so called "synonyms," Costello said.
For instance, each whale or dolphin has on average 14 different scientific names," Costello said. "As those synonyms are discovered through careful examination of records and specimens, the researchers expect perhaps 40,000 "species" to be struck from the list. But such losses will probably be made up as DNA evidence reveals overlooked "cryptic" species."
This database provides an example of how other biologists could similarly collaborate to collectively produce an inventory of all life on Earth," Appeltans said according to the same report.
