The Census of Marine Life’s latest report is a doozy. It includes ~5,600 new species in addition to the 230,000 already recorded. Scientists hope to increase the figure by thousands before the census is done in October 2010. In the tally, researchers have cataloged 17,650 species below a depth of 656 feet (where sunlight ceases):
“The deep sea was considered a desert until not so long ago; it’s quite amazing to have documented close to 20,000 forms of life in a zone that was thought to be barren,” said Jesse Ausubel with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, a sponsor of the census. “The deep sea is the least explored environment on earth.”
The poster critter of the expedition is, of course, a very charismatic sea cucumber called Enypniastes. At 2,750 meters deep in the Northern Gulf of Mexico, it has many tentacles and sweeps sediment into its mouth. What a little beauty!
November 23rd, 2009 at 9:06 am
Given that we find life in the most seemingly inhospitable places on Earth, the chances of finding life elsewhere int the solar systems are getting better. I wonder how long before we have proof of life on existing other worlds.
November 23rd, 2009 at 12:21 pm
can these creatures hurt a human if physical contact were to be made, such as with a jelly fish? They certainly are beautiful…..
November 23rd, 2009 at 3:05 pm
@1 Guy
me too
@2 marilee shelton
Different species exhibit different qualities and I don’t know enough about the life history of this critter to say. I studied Cucumaria frondosa which you’ll often encounter in touch tanks at aquariums (along with sea stars and horseshoe crabs). These are relatively innocuous to touch but I encountered unusual toxins upon dissection, which is common among echinoderms.
November 23rd, 2009 at 4:18 pm
From what I understand Enypniastes sp. are considered harmless…
You might like to take a scan through this interesting article on Enypniatses eximia:
Ohta, S. 1985. Photographic Observations of the Swimming Behavior of the Deep-Sea Pelagothuriid Holothurian Epyniastes (Elasipoda, Holithurioidea). Journal of the Oceonographical Society of Japan, 41, 121-133.
November 23rd, 2009 at 9:33 pm
So cool!
November 24th, 2009 at 9:38 am
@ marilee and Sheril -
What I find most intriguing about this photograph is that it shows an organism, little changed from its distant late Precambrian and early Cambrian ancestors, that belongs to a phylum, the Hemichordata, that is, relatively speaking, the nearest “sibling” to our own phylum, Chordata (I make this observation as a former invertebrate paleobiologist.).
November 29th, 2009 at 7:21 pm
Such prolific life simply boggles the mind!
January 27th, 2010 at 11:40 am
[...] in on management of the most charismatic of invertebrates–the great sea cucumber–in the latest journal of Ocean and Coastal [...]