Ambitious effort to document marine life reveals 866 new species and counting

This previously unknown species of sea star thrives in the extreme conditions of theJøtul Hydrothermal Vent Field in the Arctic. Martin Hartley/The Nippon Foundation-Nekton Ocean Census via CNN Newsource

A guitar-shaped shark, a fan-like coral and a venomous deep-sea snail equipped with harpoon-like teeth are among 866 previously unknown species discovered as part of an ambitious effort to document marine life.

Found by divers, piloted submersibles and remotely operated vehicles during 10 ocean expeditions, the species have all been deemed new to science, according to Ocean Census, a global alliance to protect sea life, which this week released the first major update since its launch in 2023.

The 10-year project aims to plug the huge gaps that exist in scientists’ knowledge of the ocean depths. Michelle Taylor, a coral expert at the University of Essex and a principal investigator at Ocean Census, said the scope for discovery is immense.

“Probably only 10% of marine species have been discovered,” Taylor told CNN from onboard the Schmidt Ocean Institute’s Falkor (too) research vessel while on a 35-day expedition to the South Sandwich Islands in the southern Atlantic Ocean.

“And for the species that have been discovered … with Ocean Census, it’s across such a wide variety of taxa; so everything from sharks to pipefish to gastropods (such as snails) to my own beautiful, little corals.”

Scientists found the new species at depths of 3 feet (1 meter) to 3.1 miles (4,990 meters), with analysis conducted by scientists involved in the Ocean Census Science Network, which includes more than 800 scientists from 400 institutions.

Taylor was confident the expedition in which she is participating would add more new species to the list — including what she suspected was a previously unknown coral collected three days earlier. “This is an area of the world that’s very remote,” she said. “It took eight days on the boat from southern Chile to get here. It’s very rarely visited.”

Speeding up species discovery

As a coral specialist, Taylor said one of her favorites among the newly revealed discoveries was an elegant octocoral, which has eight tentacles, is found in the Maldives, and is softer and more flexible than other coral species.

Ocean Census researchers also located the guitar shark, which belongs to a genus known as Rhinobatos, off the coast of Mozambique and Tanzania. Its shape is distinctive, and the animal displays characteristics of both sharks and rays.

“Shark species; their numbers are dropping dramatically in every ocean of the world, so to discover a new species is quite special,” Taylor said.

A separate expedition found new species such as a limpet, a marine mollusk with a conical shell, and a sea star in polar waters at a depth of 10,000 feet (3,053 meters) in the Norwegian-Greenland Sea. Creatures there thrive in an environment of extreme variation in temperature: from near-freezing to areas just meters away from hydrothermal vent fluids exceeding 572 degrees Fahrenheit (300 C).

A predatory gastropod named Turridrupa magnifica was another remarkable find. These deep-sea snails inject toxins into their prey with their unusual teeth. Bioactive compounds in the venom of related species have contributed to medical advancements, including pain treatments.

New technology such as genetic sequencing of environmental DNA and real-time imaging is making the identification of new marine species quicker and easier, but scientists still rely on collecting physical specimens for confirmation, which can be slow work, Taylor said.

Scientifically describing a new species can take several years, and many of the previously unknown organisms revealed by Ocean Census have not yet been formally named, Taylor said. A key goal of the alliance is to accelerate the pace of discovery. When it launched, the scientists involved with the project said they aimed to identify 100,000 new species over 10 years.

“Going through the academic peer review process to … have that species name in a paper can take such an extraordinary length of time that it’s almost impeding that knowledge,” Taylor said.

“Our marine environments are facing some extraordinary challenges, and if we want to start understanding biodiversity, connectivity, the biogeography and potential loss, like how this changing climate is going to impact our marine environment, we do have to start finding quicker ways.”