Researchers at the Census for Marine Life have spent the past decade counting fish. (Photo courtesy of NOAA)
You’ve heard there are lots
of fish in the sea, but nobody
knows exactly how many. That’s
what a project has been trying
to find out. Samara Freemark reports the results
will be out soon:
Transcript
You’ve heard there are lots
of fish in the sea, but nobody
knows exactly how many. That’s
what a project has been trying
to find out. Samara Freemark reports the results
will be out soon:
Researchers at the Census for Marine Life have spent the past decade counting fish. They want to get as accurate a count as possible of how many animals are in the sea.
The project is based at the University of Rhode Island, but 2000 scientists around the world are collaborating.
Darlene Crist works with the Marine Census. She says the project used a huge range of tools to sample fish populations: electronic tags, robots, cameras– as well as some pretty unconventional research methods.
“We’ve used old tax records, ship logs, even restaurant menus.”
Now Crist say they’re done counting and they’re starting to crunch numbers.
Researchers say the data will serve as the first baseline measure of life in the ocean. They hope it will help policymakers better manage the fish stocks that remain.
Full results will be available this fall.
For The Environment Report, I’m Samara Freemark.