the Ocean Census—a project that has set out to accelerate the discovery of sea life—announced that it has found 1,121 previously unknown ocean species since last April.
Though it may seem that Earth is already largely explored, the vast majority of animal species on Earth—perhaps as many as 90 percent of them—remain undescribed. “This is really a planetary blindspot,”
Note: Not too sure where this 90% estimation comes from, because I didn’t find a reference in the linked article. I wouldn’t be surprised if they sort of rounded the numbers from a 2011 paper titled:
How Many Species Are There on Earth and in the Ocean?
In spite of 250 years of taxonomic classification and over 1.2 million species already catalogued in a central database, our results suggest that some 86% of existing species on Earth and 91% of species in the ocean still await description
This is so cool!! Honestly I’ve always been a “explore the ocean” kind of person as opposed to “explore space” kind of person. It blows my mind sometimes that we’re surrounded by crazy aliens and aren’t thinking about it every hour of every day. Sometimes I go up to my partner and I’m like “do you ever think about how crazy it is that squids are just out there with all their tentacles doing things that are normal for squids but absolutely bonkers from our point of view and we’re just sitting here eating breakfast?” which I recognize probably says something about my neurotypicality or lack thereof.
Don’t worry they’ll all be dead soon so we don’t have to worry
