海洋生物普查2006集锦www.coml.org.PDFVIP

This translation was pr epar ed by Professor Song SUN, Chair of the Chinese National Impl ementation Committee of the Census of Marine Lif e. | 2006 AT THE LIMITS OF KNOWLEDGE Discoveries of record-breaking extremes at the frontiers of knowledge highlighted the year. And six years into its 10-year program, the Census of Marine Life has gone fully global. The 17 core Census projects involve networks of researchers spanning all ocean realms. Affiliated projects added during 2006 in the Gulf of Mexico and along Australia’s Great Barrier Reef bring the participants to more than 2,000 from 80 nations. Nine regional and national committees ensure that all areas of the global ocean are represented. 106 17 2006 8020009 To census the diversity, distribution, and abundance of marine life, participants pooled their talents and specialties, ships and laboratories, archives and technology. They sailed on 19 expeditions, for example, in the Southern Ocean bringing onboard more new species than species already seen by centuries of explorers. Nearshore, the number of active sampling sites has grown exponentially from 30 to128 in 2006 alone. Across the open ocean, Census participants tracked with satellites more than 20 species of animals from sharks and squid to sea lions and albatross, distributing themselves through hundreds of thousands of kilometers of national and international waters. With sound waves, participants outlined schools of abundant fish spanning tens of kilometers of ocean, whose three dimensions could not be revealed previously by one-dimensional traverses. The now-proven effectiveness of the Census ’ unprecedented international links, coordination of work, and sharing of data in 2006 point toward a census by 2010 of what lived, now lives, and will live in the world’s oceans. 19 200630128 20 Hottest ChEss Near a vent 3 km beneath the equatorial Atlantic, Census researchers, using equipment attached to