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Last Modified 10/6/2008 |
BIO BULLETINS:
Reports About Life on Earth
Taking Stock of Coral Reefs
Australia
A recent expedition to three coral reefs off the coast of Australia has added hundreds of species to the Census of Marine Life, a global effort by marine biologists to answer a tough but basic question: What lives in the ocean? There could be more than a million marine species, yet only a fraction has been described. The goal of the census is to create the most complete database possible of marine life by 2010. Reef systems face many pressures, from pollution to overfishing to global warming. The census will be a critical baseline to judge how coral reefs respond to human disturbance.