The Full Picture

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The green ocean –

observations of marine biodiversity

D. James Baker, David Farmer and Kristen Yarincik,

Scientific Steering Committee, Census of Marine Life

rom space, a green ocean appears where the chlorophyll

of plankton reveals productive areas. But most ocean life,

although a vital and connected part of our living planet,

is largely hidden from view. Observations of marine biodiver-

sity – from the surface to the bottom of the ocean – are thus a

central concern of GEO. Fish have been an essential food source

since prehistoric times. Marine life provides much of the oxygen

we breathe and removes a significant fraction of the atmos-

phere’s greenhouse gases. Despite years of research on fish and

marine mammals, their feeding, breeding and migration

patterns remain a mystery to us today. Our ignorance is even

deeper when it comes to non-commercial species including the

abundant marine microbes and viruses, most of which have yet

to be identified.

This ignorance contributes to deep uncertainty about

human impacts on the ocean. Coastal pollution, the

massive harvest of marine resources using modern tech-

niques and, at ocean scales, the evolving chemical and

physical properties associated with global warming, all

affect the ocean and its life in unpredictable ways. We

are only starting to learn about the interconnectedness

of the marine web of life; but the more we learn, the

better we understand that when something happens at

one level or to one species, other species are impacted,

throughout the food web. It is this interconnected char-

acter across the diversity of life that motivates our need

to understand what lives in the ocean. Exploring and

cataloguing this diversity is the central theme of the

Census of Marine Life (the Census). The Census is a

coordinated international effort to quantify what is

known and to identify the unknown and the bound-

aries of what can be known about life in the world

ocean.

The Census is the first international programme to

systematically study the global ocean from a biological

standpoint. It is providing information, technologies and

approaches for critical understanding and management

of marine ecosystems. The Census is identifying threat-

ened species and important breeding areas and is helping

authorities develop effective strategies for the sustain-

able management of marine resources. In short, it is both

making scientific discoveries and helping society deal

with the multiple threats to the ocean from human activ-

ity. The Census asks: what lived; what lives; and what

will live in the oceans? By combining what we learn

about historical trends with our knowledge of what lives

there now, we can begin to formulate an answer to the

core question of what will live in the ocean of tomor-

row. Thus the Census scientific programmes and global

database system are a critical contribution to the Global

Earth Observing System of Systems (GEOSS).

What is the Census?

The Census of Marine Life is a growing global network

of more than 2,000 researchers in more than 80 nations

engaged in a ten-year initiative to assess and explain the

diversity, distribution, and abundance of marine life in

the oceans. The Census uses field projects, new tech-

The Green Ocean

Chlorophyll concentration evident in northern seas and coastal regions

(indicated by colours from green to red) as measured by the NASA satellite

instrument MODIS on Aqua (1 May-1 June 2007)

Courtesy NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

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IODIVERSITY