Some 13,000 new marine species have been discovered in the past year, according to information released by an international alliance of scientists. The Census of Marine Life (COML) has also uncovered previously unknown migration routes used by fish such as tuna and shark. The $1bn 10-year project, which is building a huge database, involves researchers in more than 70 countries. The new knowledge will inform future conservation and fisheries policies. "We're just skimming the surface," said Dr Ron O'Dor, Chief Census Scientist, based in Washington DC, US. "We know something about the first 100m at this point but we know almost nothing about what lies down in the deep. "Our analysis shows that if you catch a fish below 2,000m it is 50 times more likely to be new to science," he told the BBC News website. The census has seen an exponential growth in knowledge in the 12 months since it issued its last progress report. Some specimens are pulled up on trawls, counted and catalogued. Other organisms are even tagged and tracked. A remarkable picture of how life operates in the deep is beginning to emerge. "In some of the results we've had you can see a kind of doughnut of circulation which seems to concentrate life in deep water," explained Dr Fred Grassle of Rutgers University, US, who chairs the Census' International Scientific Steering Committee. "The doughnuts were 10km in diameter and thousands of metres below the surface."
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