Countless Microbe Species Discovered in Census of Marine Life

The 10-year Census of Marine Life has discovered huge numbers of previously unknown microbes, zooplankton, crustaceans, worms, and other small species, astonishing scientists with the sheer number of life forms that make up the lower orders of the marine food chain. Scientists estimate that as many as a billion different marine microbe species may exist, forming a biomass so vast that its weight equals that of 240 billion African elephants. Among the major discoveries of the census was the existence of large, whitish mats on the sea floor formed by multi-cellular bacteria that resemble thin strands of spaghetti. One such mat — roughly the size of Greece — was found in oxygen-starved Pacific waters off the coasts of Chile and Peru. “In no other realm of sea life has the magnitude of Census discovery been as extensive as in the world of microbes,” said Mitch Sogin, a scientist from the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass. who heads the marine microbe census.