I think I have a new favourite website. The Smithsonian Ocean Portal. I have had oceans on the brain for months, and now I know what I will be doing with all my free time for months to come.
This photograph miraculously depicts nine (NINE!!) different animals all collected by Smithsonian researchers involved in the Deep Reef Observation Project. Collected 60m (~200 ft) near Curaçao in the southern Caribbean, these gastropods and echinoderms are just a tiny (literally) example of the diversity of life in the oceans.
The article accompanying this photo, written by Cristina Castillo, also mentions The Census of Marine Life, "a 10-year international effort undertaken in to assess the diversity (how many different kinds), distribution (where they live), and abundance (how many) of marine life—a task never before attempted on this scale."
For more information and some mind boggling statistics, have a look at this.
For some mind boggling images please look here.
There is a post in the works on the Census for Marine Life.....
Hopefully coming this week.
