The ocean’s doomsday book: the decade-long census of oceanic biodiversity

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.