The United States Census of Marine Life was established in 2002 in consultation with the National Academies of Sciences, the National Research Council, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the international Scientific Steering Committee (SSC) of the Census of Marine Life (CoML). The US component of the CoML, led by a National Committee (USNC), seeks to build broad US community support to establish CoML as a sustained national research and monitoring program for marine and coastal biodiversity in support of its mission.
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| The Antarctic ice fish does not have red blood pigments (hemoglobin) nor red blood cells. This is an adaptation to the low temperature. The blood becomes more fluid, as a consequence, the animals saves energy to pump blood through their body. Interestingly the brittle stars are overgrown by a yellow sponge. Photo: Julian Gutt/ Alfred Wegener Institute |
The USNC works with Congress, federal agencies, the academic community, and private sector partners to establish a long-term, sustained program on marine biodiversity.
The goals are to:
- establish research and exploration programs that provide genetic-, species-, and community-level information;
- improve tools and technologies for studying the ocean and monitoring and projecting ecosystem change; and
- develop educational information to create an ocean literate society, influence ocean policy development, and foster wise use of US resources.
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Loggerhead Challenge Sportsmanship Award Named for Dr. Wes Tunnell
Dr. Wes Tunnell
Finally, it was recently announced that Dr. Wes Tunnell, Vice Chair of the US National Committee, was honored by Texas Sea Grant when they announced that their Loggerhead Sportsmanship Award will be named after him.
The award is given annually to the team judged to best embody the spirit of earnest competition while demonstrating exemplary decorum during the Loggerhead Challenge Regional Competition of the National Ocean Sciences Bowl (NOSB), held in Corpus Christi. For more on this story please visit http://sci.tamucc.edu/news/2010/tunnell.html.
The Mid Atlantic Ridge Ecosystems (MAR-ECO) project of the Census of Marine Life recently returned from an expedition focused on the cold waters north of the Gulf Stream and the warmer waters to the south.
Census of Marine Life scientists have inventoried an astonishing abundance, diversity and distribution of deep sea species that have never known sunlight – creatures that somehow manage a living in a frigid black world down to 5,000 meters (~3 miles) below the ocean waves.
Drawing from such unlikely sources as ships logs, tax records, literary sources, and monastery archives, marine scientists are painting a picture of past life in the global ocean.
ArcOD (Arctic Ocean Diversity) and CAML (Census of Antarctic Marine Life) researchers are startled to find the Polar oceans share 235 species.
Census of Marine Life U.S. National Committee (USNC) member and ocean advocate Sylvia Earle was awarded the prestigious 2009 TED Prize for her life long devotion and advocacy for the ocean and the creatures that inhabit it.
Ocean in Google Earth, which enables user to dive beneath the surface of the sea and explore the world’s oceans, was launched on February 2, 2009 at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, CA.
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Loggerhead Challenge Sportsmanship Award Named for Dr. Wes Tunnell: Finally, it was recently announced that Dr. Wes Tunnell, Vice Chair of the US National Committee, was honored by Texas S... 
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