Scientists Update Marine Species Database, Add 1,500 New Species

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Scientists announced just recently that they have identified 1,500 new marine species during the last year, including the humpback dolphin and giant jellyfish.

Scientists say that there are 228 thousand marine species have been identified up to present and 500 thousand to two million other are not yet identified.

The WoRMS was initiated in 2008 and have recorded 1.451 new marine species including sponges, South African star shrimp, and the poisonous tentacle-less giant jellyfish from Australia.

"The deep sea has been poorly explored so far," Jan Mees, co-chair of the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS), told Reuters.

Along with new species, a review by 200 editors also slashed about 190,000 species from the world lists after finding they duplicated already known organisms. That cut the total to 228,450 from almost 419,000.

One sea snail, often known as a "rough periwinkle", had a record 113 descriptions by scientists unaware it had been catalogued by an Italian expert in Venice in 1792.

Deep regions of the oceans and tropical coral reefs were among promising sites to hunt for new species, said Mees, the director of the Flanders Marine Institute in Belgium where WoRMS is based. And the Indian Ocean is relatively unexplored compared to the Atlantic and Pacific.

(Writing by Alister Doyle, Editing by Alison Williams)

REUTERS