Discover thousands of strange sea creatures

Sea melon, finned octopus, oil-eating octopus are three of thousands of new marine creatures with strange shapes found by scientists.

Sea melon (Enypniastes) is found in the northern Gulf of Mexico, under a depth of 2,750 m.Photo: Daily Mail.

Census of Marine Life is an international project that lists all animals in the oceans. The program started in 2000 and will end in 2010 with the participation of more than 2,000 scientists from more than 80 countries. In the latest report published on November 21, scientists claimed they counted 17,650 species that live at depths of 200 meters or more - where light cannot reach.

Oceanographer Robert S. Carney of the University of Louisiana (USA) said that life below the ocean is much more complex and lively than human thought. He said that several thousand species of marine life live in dark water layers. They eat the forms of matter that are in the process of decomposition and settle down to the bottom - including whale bones. Oil and methane are also the bottom energy sources of animals.

The octopus has two newly discovered elephant-like fins.They use fins to swim.The body length of this octopus can be up to 2 m.Photo: Daily Mail.

Ever since the Census of Marine Life project began, scientists have found about 5,600 new species of organisms. They hope that number will increase by several thousand when the project ends in October 2010.

Scientists claim there are still more than one million species of organisms not yet discovered and they will announce this fact to the public. Biologists account for 1.5 million species of plants and terrestrial animals. In the sea, there are 5,722 species living at a depth of 1,000 m or more.

Oil-eating worms (Neocyema) are found in the Atlantic Ocean.Photo: Daily Mail.

"The bottom of the sea is the environment that people discover the least on the planet. Not long ago, scientists still think that the ocean floor is like a desert, which means there are not many creatures. But we feel any When he found nearly 20,000 forms of life in an area once thought to be nothing, " said Jesse Ausubel, an expert at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Alfred P. Sloan Foundation funded the Census of Marine Life project.