Wednesday, June 16, 2010

How Mysterious, the Oceans...

Did you know the world's highest waterfall is underwater - near Greenland? That six times as many men have been to the moon as to the deepest depths of the ocean? That about 230,000 species of marine organisms have been discovered, and estimates of the undiscovered ones are over three times that? This article is a good reminder that, as Sylvia Earle once put it, "We know more about Mars" than we do about the deep sea.
COMMENT: As readers of this blog will know, we have not even defined all the large animals. New beaked whales, dolphins, and sharks keep showing up in the journals, and there are good sightings of at least two types of unclassified beaked whales, plus several problematic accounts of dolphins and porpoises, indicating just how much we still have to learn. And that's before we even get to the fishes, and we have no idea where we stand on the invertebrates...

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