SARAH MCCAMMON, HOST:
Guitar sharks, mud dragons, water bears and - sorry, arachnophobes - sea spiders. Those are just a few of the new species recently discovered by a global research initiative called Ocean Census, which aims to learn more about all the mysterious life forms that live in the depths of our oceans. Lucy Woodall is the head of science at Ocean Census, and she joins us now from Oxford in the U.K. Lucy Woodall, thanks for being with us.
LUCY WOODALL: Ah, great to talk to you today.
MCCAMMON: So you found just a ton of new discoveries - over 850 new creatures, I gather. Were you expecting to find so many?
WOODALL: Yes is the short answer. We have such a wealth of diversity in the ocean, but we have knowledge about just a teeny, tiny percentage of those, almost, like - just about 10%. So we knew there was going to be lots out there but really delighted about how the global community has come together and worked to get this amazing number in just a few short years.
MCCAMMON: Right. I understand this involves a lot of cooperation between researchers from around the world. I mean, how does it work? How do you work together?
WOODALL: So, I mean, our job, really, at Ocean Census is to facilitate the amazing work that taxonomists do across the globe. And this can be things like doing expeditions together, but also be able to share that knowledge, which is really important with early career researchers - that next generation.
MCCAMMON: Yeah. Tell us about some of these new species you've discovered. I mean, they do have some interesting names like the guitar shark and the pipehorse. What are you finding?
WOODALL: Yeah. So the guitar shark that was found, was found at about 200-meters depth - and that's about 650 feet - off of the coast of Mozambique and Tanzania by an amazing shark expert based in South Africa. And this is pretty cool to think that something that's iconic as a shark, we're still finding these new species. But I'm really glad that you mentioned that pipehorse. It is one of my favorites. I've done a lot of studies on seahorses in the past, and they're part of the same family. The pipehorse is a little pipe with a - sort of a turned-up tail, and it's - prehensile tail. It can sort of - can grab onto things. They're so cute.
MCCAMMON: We know that the deep ocean often provides the potential for undiscovered life, but I gather some of these discoveries were actually made closer to home - around coral reefs, for example. I mean, how is it possible that there are still undiscovered species in shallower waters?
WOODALL: I think the challenge we have is that our ocean data are biased, and they're really patchy. We've only got tiny snippets, and the ocean is changing so quickly. So we really need to accelerate our discoveries. And that's what we're finding not only in our deeper waters, where we haven't been able to explore so much in the past, but even in our shallow waters. Where people even go on their holidays, we're finding new things, and I think this is partly because we've only got a few taxonomists and a massive ocean to try and look at.
MCCAMMON: Now, I've also read that many of the species you're looking for actually become extinct before they can even be documented. I mean, do you feel like you're in a race against time, in a way?
WOODALL: Yeah. I mean, it really is that race against time. What we do know is that we know very little. The majority of our data have been collected from historically privileged areas. So now we need to open that up so that not only do we have a really good understanding of the North Atlantic, which is where a lot of these data have been collected from, but indeed, across the entirety of the world.
MCCAMMON: That's Lucy Woodall, the head of science at Ocean Census. Thanks so much for speaking with us today.
WOODALL: Bye. And thanks so much for speaking with me.
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