Many New Species Found Under Antarctica

gt_mattex writes to tell us The Globe and Mail is reporting that quite a few new species have been found in the ocean beneath the Antarctic ice. From the article: "It is too early to say exactly how many new species were discovered in the Antarctic, many in the Weddell Sea, where ice crushed the ship of Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton in 1915. The scientists saw more strange creatures than familiar ones, says Ron O'Dor, an expert in octopuses and squid from Halifax's Dalhousie University and the chief scientist in charge of producing the first marine life census of the planet by 2010."

Let me get in my boat before you start research...

[the_tsi (19767)]

Is this the initial stage of the Second Impact?

Amazing

[Sneakernets (1026296)]

It's been millenia and we still don't know all the life on our planet. I always look forward to articles like this, they really tell us how little we do know.

Re:Amazing

[LiquidMind (150126)]

i've been thinking about that too, especially about the life that resides at the bottom of our oceans....
how interesting (and suicidal, but bear with me) would it be to somehow drain all the oceans of water just to see what's left over...

i'm with you

[circletimessquare (444983)]

take the common wood louse [google.com], that you can find under any rock in any forest

now, blow it up a thousand fold in size

there you go [google.com], running around the ocean floor

amazing indeed

Re:i'm with you

[Lord_Dweomer (648696)]

I knew I'd see some of these. For any slashdotters who want to see a FASCINATING and beautifully produced BBC documentary on this, I recommend episode 2 "The Deep" from their award-winning "The Blue Planet" series. Here's a direct .torrent link.

BBC The Blue Planet: The Deep .torrent [mininova.org]

Re:Amazing

[StikyPad (445176)]

Drain the oceans?!? That's ridiculous -- where would they go??? I guess you could find something that sucks really hard, like Digg, put a straw in it, and plop it on the beach.

But it would make much more sense to rapidly evaporate all of them, perhaps with a large scale hairdryer task force and/or a few strategically placed nukes.

Anyone else worried after reading this?

[chabotc (22496)]

"A school of fish the size of Manhattan off the New Jersey coast. About 20 million herring were travelling together."

That soon we'll find ways to make ocean life go extinct in those parts which so far relativly are protected from our interferance.. With our normal area's of fishing drying up quickly, how long will it take before we go and do our thing there too ... *sigh*

Re:Anyone else worried after reading this?

[nog_lorp (896553)]

Don't you worry! We will have those scary new species gone in no time!

that's a bizarre reaction

[circletimessquare (444983)]

that little nugget of news was reason to find cheer, i think

a colossal school of herring? off new jersey? isn't that good news?

why the despondent reaction to that news item? there are certainly tons of news items to find depressing reactions to about ocean life and man's hungry stomach... but that particular nugget of news is reason to cheer, don't you think?

Re:

[node 3 (115640)]

It's like finding a pocket of air in a sinking ship. The good news is far overshadowed by the bad news.

Great...

[Durrok (912509)]

Here comes the Second Impact. Glad I'm a couple hundred miles inland and not living in Japan...

ANCIENTS

[Joe The Dragon (967727)]

IT's the ANCIENT outpost

shouldn't it be...

[wealthychef (584778)]

"octopi and squids"? :-)

Re:shouldn't it be...

[lawpoop (604919)]

The word 'pus' is Greek for foot, and the plural in Greek is 'podes', so it would be octopodes -- except the name of the animal is not 'eight-feet', it's 'eight-foot', so it's one 'eight-foot' or 'octopus' and many 'eight-foots' or 'octopuses'.

If it rhymes, it must be true

[Rob the Bold (788862)]

In the ocean, wriggling by,

are octopuses, not octopi.

Attr. to Patricia T. O'Conner, as is the quote, "Octopi is for suckers".

Re:If it rhymes, it must be true

[ModMeFlamebait (781879)]

octopi is 25.1327412

Needs pictures

[Inverted Intellect (950622)]

The article describes some pretty odd creatures.

I mean, without a picture of that centimeter-in-diameter protozoan, how the hell am I supposed to imagine how it looks like, much less the more important facets of such a discovery... such as how does it taste?

what, the yeti lobster didn't do it for you?

[circletimessquare (444983)]

but, anyways, here you go, lotsa pictures [bbc.co.uk]

My god -- it's full of geeks

[anagama (611277)]

In the dark ocean beneath the Antarctic ice, researchers have found scores of species they've never seen before, including strange jellyfish and other gelatinous organisms that thrive without light

My god -- it's full of geeks.

New...?

[djupedal (584558)]

As in just fell out of the tree of evolution?

...bah....

Those critter are most likely checking out the mini-subs and shaking their heads and thinking "Oh, look! A new species!"

Re:Could they be harmful?

[MyLongNickName (822545)]

Other then that

Seek also the difference between "then" and "than" ;)

Re:Could they be harmful?

[Fred_A (10934)]

Naaah. Since they never probably evolve near humans, they couldn't possibility be harmful.

They could have nasty pointy teeth.

Re:Could they be harmful?

[jd (1658)]

Everything in Australia is deadly. The spiders are deadly, the snakes are deadly, the crocodiles are deadly, the plants are deadly, the driving in Sydney is definitely deadly, the TV commercials are lethal... I never did find out what happened to those rabbits that escaped from a research facility on a Government-owned island and made it to shore, back in '95. As I recall, they were being used for some research into some lethal pathogen or other. Since there are Australians still alive, I take it that the crisis was brought under control, but that was cutting it a little fine. I guess we can add the Australian Government to things that are lethal, though.

Oh, that's easy.

[jd (1658)]

You label everything as one or more of "sushi", "chowder" or "probably made into soup somewhere". Saves on physiological and genetic analysis, and it's all that Joe Average is likely to care about. (If the average person gave a rat's about conservation or science, we'd be a thousand years more advanced and ten thousand years wiser.)

Besides, in 15 years or less there won't be enough of a food chain in the oceans to sustain most of the organisms that do still exist and without a gene bank capable of storing t

Re:

[TapeCutter (624760)]

What point are you trying to make, should they give up because their ultimate goal will never be reached?