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Marine biologists from around the world are converging on Auckland to discuss the plight of fish as the deadline looms for the world's first Census of Marine Life.
The census is no tilting-at-windmills attempt to count all the fish in the sea, but a huge scientific collaboration, designed to give a baseline measure of the health and wealth of the oceans.
Two thousand researchers from 80 countries are contributing to the census, which has core funding from a US philanthropic group, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
"In terms of marine biology, there's never been anything quite like this," said Dr Dennis Gordon, a principal scientist at Niwa, whose scientists are contributing to several census projects. The 10-year data gathering and reporting exercise which began in 2000 has fished up biodiversity many times greater than previously thought, from a new species of whale to a single cell microbe enclosed in a 1cm shell which lives off the coast of Portugal, 4.3km below the surface.
"Everywhere we have looked, including in the Antarctic under 700m of ice, there have been relatively luxuriant life ecosystems present - much more than anyone would have imagined," the census senior scientist, Dr Ron O'Dor, told the Weekend Herald from Washington.
While raising hopes that many marine species may adapt to climate change, the research is also adding to the case against human activities such as bottom trawling.
The more scientists plumb the depths, the weirder things get: a "Jurassic shrimp" species believed extinct for 50 million years turned up alive and well on a seamount in the Coral Sea; a flatfish is able to survive in near-boiling water above a hydrothermal vent which spews out molten sulphur, while on another vent 4km down lurked the Pompeii worm - thought to be the most heat-resistant creature on Earth.
About 200 scientists leading the 17 census projects begin their five-day "all programmes" meeting in Auckland tomorrow as time runs out for data collection before the census report is prepared.
One issue will be what happens after the 2010 report, when Sloan Foundation funding ends. But growing acceptance by governments of the census' usefulness - for everything from sustainably managing fisheries to predicting climate change - is expected to allow ongoing research and a follow-up census in 2020.
New Zealand has committed $3.8 million to send the research ship Tangaroa to the Ross Sea in Antarctica early next year to gather data for the census and International Polar Year research.
Our scientists are also leading research into seamounts, undersea mountains and volcanic features which are rich in biodiversity.
