KEY POINTS:
The sea has lots of fish. And microbes and plankton and bottom dwellers and surface predators we take for granted until they disappear.
About 1.4 million species are under the waves, most "unidentified" in a scientifically-correct way. Best, then, not to even to think about the bacteria lurking in concentrations of 20,000 per litre of seawater which baffle boffins by transferring DNA.
So who's counting? Marine scientists, caught up in an unprecedented effort to produce the first global Census of Marine Life. The census is less about numbers than describing the diversity of species and the conditions, and places, in which they can survive.
A mere 240,000 marine creatures have been scientifically described and named. At the current rate of progress, the task should take between 700 and 800 years. Scientists have only until 2010 to produce their census.
But it will be no drop in the bucket, promise organisers who meet in Auckland next week. Bringing together what is known will provide a baseline on the health and wealth of the oceans at a point in time - knowledge which can be applied to everything from managing fisheries sustainably and minimising coastal pollution to predicting the effects of climate change.
Information about 80,000 species has been entered in OBIS - Ocean Biogeographic Information System, the enormous census database which might better be named Deep Blue, or Jonah.
The census is an unprecedented collaboration between scientists from 80 countries, with core funding from a US philanthropic group, the Alfred P Sloan Foundation. The "all programmes" meeting beginning tomorrow brings together about 200 leaders of 17 census projects ranging from inshore shallows to the abyss, from the Antarctic to the mid-Atlantic, from microbes to migratory giant predators.
A marine census is more tricky than researchers donning flippers to leave questionnaires under a rock. It includes satellite tagging, sonar, hydrophones, deep scuba, video, submersible robots and DNA probes.
And researchers have already turned up tales so unbelievable they can only be true.
Highlights include finding a species of shrimp believed extinct for 50 million years - it was alive and well on an underwater volcano in the Coral Sea - discovering a new species of whale and creatures which survive under enormous pressure at depths of 4km in waters heated to boiling point by hydrothermal vents spewing out sulphur and gases.
There's the admirable stamina of the sooty shearwater, which spends much of the year following a figure-eight route with stopovers in New Zealand, Hawaii, Japan and Polynesia.
Satellite tracking of 19 tagged birds last year found they covered 70,000 km in 200 days - averaging 350km a day.
Then there's Terry the bluefin tuna which made three trans-Pacific crossings, covering 40,000km, in 20 months. Or a great white shark named Nicole which travelled 20,000km from South Africa to Australia and back in nine months.
At the other end of the evolutionary scale are the single-cell microbes - living descendants of the most ancient forms of life on Earth.
"They can live without us, but we are totally dependent upon them for our continued survival," American evolutionary scientist Mitch Sogin, who is attending the Auckland meeting, told the Independent last year. The diversity of microbes may be 100 times greater than previous estimates.
For some, the census offers proof that marine life is more robust than assumed and can adapt to climate change.
But the research is also highlighting human activity's potential to wipe out commercial and non-commercial species, even without the expected contribution of global warming - including warmer seas, higher sea levels and acidified waters.
"One of the things we are trying to do is reconstruct what a healthy ocean should look like," says Dr Dennis Gordon, a Niwa principal scientist helping the international effort to build the census database.
There's a reluctance to reveal too much about what the census has fished up in terms of new species and the state of the oceans. That's partly because of the time it can take to describe and name a new species - and the possibility that it may turn out to have been previously identified elsewhere.
Those involved are also sensitive to charges that the exercise furthers the cause of conservation, rather than exploitation, of the oceans' marine and mineral resources.
Census principal scientist Dr Ron O'Dor has already copped flak for suggesting the research has proved there are no deserts in the sea.
"I don't want to be put in the position of saying [bottom] trawling should be banned but it needs to be regulated," he told the Weekend Herald from Washington. "We can't treat the bottom of the sea as if it's a desert.
"Everywhere we have looked, including in the Antarctic under 700 metres of ice, there have been relatively luxuriant life ecosystems present, much more than anyone would have imagined."
But O'Dor - who is attending the Auckland meeting - is happy to postulate on climate change.
"We haven't identified all the species on land but know that we are losing species and we know climate change is going to affect the ocean as much, if not more, than the land.
"We are entering an era where we are going to lose species simply because things like corals [habitats rich in biodiversity] cannot move from the islands they are attached to.
"We know some islands are going to be submerged by rising sea levels, we know the oceans are acidifying, we know that temperatures are rising and all these things make it more difficult for organisms that have calcareous skeletons [including corals, sponges and molluscs] to exist.
"We know many species are going to face difficult times and some are going to be lost completely. So we need to have a description of what's here now so we can understand how much impact these changes have on the oceans and on life."
The census is also adding volumes to what's known about the (sometimes inadvertent) effects of human activity on life underwater.
We're familiar enough with food chain theory - that if tiny creatures disappear the effects can spiral all the way up the food chain; commercial fishing has shown the hunting of big fish can cascade downwards.
The cod fishery on the Newfoundland banks hasn't recovered despite a 30-year ban because, says O'Dor, the cod's depletion allowed an explosion in the population of crabs and lobsters, which feed on larval fish.
Jellyfish - incredible predators which once dominated the oceans - are multiplying around the world because their predators, such as turtles, have been decimated.
"How long does it take for the higher predators to come back - will they come back? We don't really know.
"These are the kind of things we are trying to get a handle on."
New Zealand's selection as the meeting venue says as much about our scientific commitment to the project - despite limited research funding - as it does about our location as a small island nation surrounded by oceans of biodiversity.
Dr Mark Costello, a senior lecturer in marine science at Auckland University, leads the effort to bring together all information from the census in one freely accessible database, the OBIS. Niwa's Dennis Gordon, a specialist in marine biodiversity research, is a member of the OBIS science board.
Research by Niwa and GNS Science on seamounts is acknowledged as world-leading.
Seamounts vary from from 1000m volcanoes to small knolls and hydrothermal vents and many support a weird and wacky array of creatures.
They are threatened by increased commercial fishing, including destructive bottom trawling, and by growing commercial interest in the mineral wealth they may contain.
Niwa principal scientist Dr Malcolm Clark, who heads the seamount census project, says they support species that may not be widely distributed, "so if you destroy the seamount that can drive those species close to extinction." He says the research has increased knowledge of the number of species that live on seamounts "by several thousand and the number is expected to rise exponentially over the next few years".
"The more we learn about what species are there and how they are distributed, the more we can ensure there's a balance between exploitation and conservation."
But it's not all about the here and now. Yet another project, funded by the Ministry of Fisheries, tries to go back in time to allow comparisons with past fish stocks and ecosystems.
Niwa's Dr Alison McDiarmid heads the New Zealand effort to trace how ecosystems and populations have changed since pre-Polynesian settlement. Ten institutions are involved, drawing on data ranging from kauri tree-ring chronology to whaling records and grandparents' tales about the size, and number, of snapper they caught as children.
With the clock ticking on data gathering before the census report is prepared, the Auckland meeting comes at a crucial time.
One fishhook is what happens after Sloan Foundation funding ends in 2010. The exercise will add value only if there is a follow-up census in 2020, to show how far ocean biodiversity has sunk - or swum.
But as governments come to appreciate its potential as a research tool, they are increasingly committing funding. Early next year, the Niwa research ship Tangaroa will go to the Ross Sea in Antarctica on a $3.6 million data gathering exercise, collecting biological samples and capturing images of the seafloor down to depths of 4000m. The survey is linked to the census and the International Polar Year, a global project examining climate change.
Malcolm Clark has been impressed by the willingness of the international scientific community to look beyond country and regional interests and see the bigger picture.
Other census projects focusing on continental slopes and the abyssal sea floor will bring an understanding of the place of seamounts in the wider ocean context, he says.
"Everything is linked, everything is a continuum, so collaboration between projects is an important component of making the census work."
Vital
Microbes account for 90 per cent of the biomass in oceans, and without them life in the sea and on land would not be possible. Only 5000 have been named and formally described, but they may number more than 10 million.
Adaptable
Seamounts such as Clark Volcano in the Kermadec arc, northeast of New Zealand, support a vast array of marine life such as cucumber-like sea urchins.
Abundant
Coral reefs and outcrops support great biodiversity but are threatened by climate change, which is predicted to affect ocean depth and water temperatures. Corals and the animals which use them as habitats will either have to adapt or die.
Special
A fire-brick starfish off the Poor Knights Islands, a world renowned marine reserve. New Zealand waters are home to an estimated 16,000 species, with a further 40,000-50,000 waiting to be discovered. (credit: Malcolm Francis, Niwa)
How it works
A public symposium in the Owen Glenn Building at Auckland University on Wednesday, from 1pm to 5pm, will outline many of the census projects. Niwa scientists Malcolm Clark, Dennis Gordon and Alison MacDiarmid will talk about the seamounts, history and OBIS projects. Visiting evolutionary scientist Mitch Sogin will outline the census of marine microbes, and Dr Daniel Costa will discuss the tracking of migratory predators in the Pacific.
Further details are on www.coml.org
