Scientists from around the world have begun a census of the seas that is expected to last 10 years. With so little understood about Big Blue, even the experts aren't sure what they are looking for or what they will find, writes Joseph B. Verrengia.
Brenda Konar shoots an anxious glance over her shoulder but keeps chiseling. The Pacific Ocean hasn't gone away. In fact, it's gaining on her team. Wedged between slimy boulders, the marine biologist hacks at the crusty stuff clinging to the ragged shoreline of the Kenai Peninsula. Soon, the world's second-largest tides will submerge this speck called Cohen's Island, located 400 kilometers southwest of Anchorage, the United States.
Halfway around the world, Mike Vecchione shudders as Russian deckhands slap the metal hull of his tiny submarine. He's headed down three slow, dark kilometers to the bottom of the North Atlantic, to a spot disconcertingly named the "Charley Gibbs Fracture Zone." The pressure down there would crumple a truck.
From pole to pole, in virtually every ocean, scientists from two dozen nations are wrapping up preliminary field studies. Together the studies will serve as the foundation for the most extensive project of its kind - the Census of Marine Life.
The census seeks a fundamental understanding of all life that relies on the largely unexplored seas, increasingly beleaguered by pollution, overfishing and climate change.
This unprecedented field guide to millions of species is supposed to be completed in 10 years. It could cost as much as US$1 billion, much of it funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and governments.
It's a staggering budget. But it's a fraction of the US$55 billion seafood trade or what it costs to clean up a major oil spill.
And it's also risky. Biologists must contend with hurricanes, sharks, icebergs, shoals and riptides, sinking boats and busted equipment.
The census is divided into six topics. Besides Pacific shorelines and the North Atlantic sea floor, scientists are examining the Gulf of Maine, hydrothermal vents, coastal salmon runs and the worldwide habits of large fish and mammals.
That tsunami of raw information will go into an open database that researchers everywhere can use, similar to the Human Genome Project. "We're asking scientists to think beyond their own half kilometer of beach," said Ronald O'Dor, a Nova Scotia squid expert who has moved to Washington to coordinate the census. "We don't know what we'll find. We don't even know what we are looking for."
Scientists expect the census will shed new light on Earth's fundamental processes, like evolution and climate. But others expect it will serve more practical purposes.
Environmentalists will use it to identify threatened species and locations for marine parks. Fishing and shipping interests believe the observations will make them more efficient - and profitable. And bio-prospectors hope the census will yield a bounty of new materials and compounds, ranging from medicines to industrial adhesives.
The census begins in earnest at a time when the ocean's bounty is alarmingly skimpy. Large fish have been depleted by 90 percent since World War II, and new fishing grounds are finished within 15 years by industrial fleets that use sonar, spotting planes and nets stretching 80 kilometers.
Their methods do not distinguish between adults and babies, and they unintentionally kill millions of other creatures, including 1,000 whales, dolphins and porpoises per day.
Often, undersea habitats are destroyed, permanently dimming recovery hopes.
Yet until the census' preliminary studies, nobody could describe with certainty where fish go or the places they live.
"People think of space being the final frontier, but most of our planet is very poorly known," Vecchione said. "You can't protect something that you don't understand and you can't use something that you haven't inventoried."
So far, the most startling results have come from the fish-taggers.
Biologists attach digital instruments to the backs of the oceans' most athletic swimmers and fearsome hunters. Known collectively as pelagics, these sharks, tuna, humpback whales, elephant seals, Humboldt squid, even sea turtles are tracked by satellite on their mysterious journeys.
Early data from 700 Atlantic bluefin tuna demonstrate that fish from different regions commingle freely during migrations ranging from the Texas coast to the Mediterranean.
The results smash assumptions that bluefin populations never mix and that fleets can intensively harvest particular regions, such as the Flemish Cap off Canada, without harming stocks throughout the hemisphere.
The stakes are huge. Globally, 3 million tons of tuna are processed annually. A single bluefin fetches US$175,000 at Tokyo's seafood market.
But the bluefin population has been plummeting since the 1980s. International commissions already are using tagging data to establish more restrictive quotas worldwide.
Tags show great white sharks leave California for Hawaii, often diving more than 600 meters. But none would follow Vecchione nearly 3,000 meters down to the Charley Gibbs Fracture Zone. He scrunches against a tiny porthole to watch bizarre, gelatinous creatures of the deep drift by.
It is Vecchione's ninth dive, but his first to this extreme depth - and the first by anyone to the Charley Gibbs. It's a spur of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the mountainous undersea spine where continental plates bump and grind, forming new crust.
A dive lasts more than 12 hours, including long stretches in utter darkness to conserve battery power. Vecchione's sub drifts down sheer cliff faces and crests lava hills. It's a Precambrian aquarium teeming with life forms that emerged 600 million years ago.
Sampling it is dicey because the creatures' fluid-filled body sacs often explode. So Vecchione relies on video. Vecchione's reconnaissance will keep him busy all winter identifying "mystery animals."
In Alaska, shoreline studies by Konar and her research partner, Katrin Iken, wrestle with the opposite problem: too many samples. The ferocious tide peels back Kachemak Bay's dreary gray veil to reveal a psychedelic 1970s world.
The rocky bottom is a lush shag carpet of glistening emerald algae and draperies of rubbery brown kelp. Clam and oyster shells crunch underfoot like spilled party snacks.
The University of Alaska biologists have already completed surveys at Kodiak Island, Prince William Sound and the Beaufort Sea above the Arctic Circle.
Others will use similar methods to examine shorelines in Russia, Japan, Thailand, Chile and Antarctica.
Shorelines are the most dynamic zone of the unknown marine environment. Beaches erode, rivers pump in fresh water and nutrients, storms pound and tides rip. Entire communities of plants and animals can change every meter.
Most of the world's population and industry are crowded along coastlines, so when catastrophe strikes, those regions suffer the most.
The shoreline holds great promise, too. Even humble sponges, for example, have yielded anti-cancer compounds while the spines of another have properties that engineers are incorporating in fiber-optic cables.
During high tide at Kachemak Bay, Konar and Iken scuba-dive about 9 meters down to where life always is submerged. "We pull up laundry bags full of kelp," Konar says.
At low tide, the steep slopes of little islands are exposed throughout the bay. They reveal distinct layers - barnacles and mussels up high, followed by red algae, brown algae and the crown of the kelp.
At each layer, the biologists isolate sections of exposed rocks with a square-meter frame of white plastic pipe. Iken photographs each square. They kneel and count every living thing inside the frame. They persist through rain and spitting ice. Their chiseling echoes like gunfire.
Within minutes, the tide and the storm swallow their sites. After a punishing boat ride back to the mainland, the real census work begins. "I like the big picture," Iken says, waving tweezers and spinning her census dream. "I want to compare this with a site in California. And Chile." "And did you know that nobody is working on gelatinous bioplankton?" Konar nods.
Through the open door, they can hear the tide racing out again.