Census in the News 2009

The March 2009 conclusion of the International Polar Year (IPY) has left a lasting legacy in the form of a network of marine biodiversity databases. Created by the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR), an inter-disciplinary committee of the International Council for Science, the Marine Biodiversity Information Network (SCAR-MarBIN) is a collaborative web portal, which provides free and open access to information on Antarctic marine biodiversity.  This portal and its associated network will serve as a clearinghouse for all of the biodiversity related data that was collected during the IPY.  For more details, a full release is available for download: SCAR-MarBIN Release

Seamounts Online, the collaborative work of the Census of Marine Life on Seamounts (CenSeam) and the San Diego Supercomputer Center, has been disseminating data on seamounts and associated species since 2005.  The goal of the Seamounts portal is to make previously hard to find data on seamounts readily available to managers, researchers and conservationists in one easy to use online resource.  Recently, this free informational portal has received a facelift and the addition of new spatial searching tools.  This new user interface, and the new data searching features, will be demonstrated at the upcoming Seamounts ’09 meeting being held during March 19-21 at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California.  For more information: Seamounts Online Release

A February 15th press release detailing Census of Marine Life involvement in the International Polar Year research was covered on television newscasts in the United States.  Russ Hopcroft of ArcOD and Census Program Director Jesse Ausubel were interviewed by their local news stations. 

Russ Hopcroft was featured in a news story about the Census IPY research on ABC News, Anchorage, Alaska: ABC Alaska Census Coverage.
 
Jesse Ausubel was interviewed by ABC News, New York in a segment about the Census as a whole.  This piece details the context and goals of the Census and highlights some notable Census discoveries: ABC New York Census Coverage.

Today (February 12) marks the 200th Anniversary of the birth of Sir Charles Darwin, whose legacy has been arguably one of the most influential to modern biological science.  His book On the Origin of Species revolutionized the way biologists look at species changes over time.  It is appropriate, then, that the Gulf of Maine Area field project should choose Darwin’s birthday to kick off their public lecture series titled “Life in the Gulf: Past, Present, and Future.”  Today marks the first lecture, entitled “Still Life: Historical Pictures of a Changing Ecosystem,” with the four remaining lectures of the series covering marine archaeology, ecosystem change, human influence, and diversity of the Gulf of Maine.  For more information and lecture dates please visit: Sea State 4.0

Web visitors can now share the excitement of Census of Marine Life explorations as scientists uncover the mysteries of what lives below the surface of the global ocean. A world of marine discoveries including 50 different kinds of Arctic jellies, a colossal sea star, and Antarctica’s biggest-ever amphipod and other interesting, rare, and new marine species can be found at http://earth.google.com/ocean. Or one can follow along on scientific explorations to the coldest, saltiest water on the planet or to a new ocean environment created by an ice shelf break the size of Jamaica or to the hottest hydrothermal vent ever discovered—hot enough to melt lead! These journeys are but a few of the 129 possibilities for learning more about marine life available on the new Census of Marine Life layer in Ocean in Google Earth.

The RRV James Clark Ross set sail on Jan 14, 2009 to study the chemosynthetic life of deep Antarctic waters.  This cruise, the first of three planned, is the kick off of the ChEsSo (ChEss in the Southern Ocean) program.  Utilizing the latest in deep ocean exploration technologies, ChEss scientists will search for vent and seep sites, record current flow around the sites and investigate biogeographic patterns of vent species in the region.  The expedition is collaborating with the Classroom at Sea Project and will be posting a cruise diary online.  For more information please visit: Chemosynthetic Life in the Antarctic.