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Science

600 New Species of Fish Discovered 178

Posted by Hemos from the cataloguing-it-all dept.
zenobr writes "Some 300 scientists from 53 countries are creating a record of all known marine life, in a project reminiscent of an aquatic Domesday Book. So far more than 15,000 species of fish have been catalogued and 2 to 3 thousand more are expected to be catalogued before the project's end in 2010. Over 500 of the fish catalogued thus far are thought to be new to science. Full story on BBC News"
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600 New Species of Fish Discovered More

600 New Species of Fish Discovered

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  • extinct fish? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by KanshuShintai ( 694567 ) on Thursday October 23, 2003 @05:06PM (#7295551) Homepage
    I wonder how many fish they thought to be extinct they'll find doing this . . .
    • Maybe they'll finally find those sneaky mermaids...

    • Re:extinct fish? (Score:2, Funny)

      by t0ny ( 590331 )
      I wonder how many fish in the catelogue will be extinct within ten years.
      • I wonder how many fish in the catelogue will be extinct within ten years.

        The next part of the study will be to determine the flavor, texture, and of course fat content of each of the fish.
        • The next part of the study will be to determine the flavor, texture, and of course fat content of each of the fish.

          And what wine works best with them.

    • And little did we know that those "big lizards" are actually fish that are running around on the ocean floor. I'm sure there are a ton of things we don't know about this planet. How long will take us to decide to start tracking all the members of these species with RFID tags? One day there will be a big computer that is monitoring us all... Of course there may already be a big computer monitoring us all that we don't know about. All it would take is some wave form emitted from each species that gets passed
  • Sounds a little fishy. *shoots self for being so stupid*
    -Seriv

    • Re:corny joke... (Score:5, Funny)

      by glenebob ( 414078 ) on Thursday October 23, 2003 @09:09PM (#7297004)
      It's getting deep in here! This story just doesn't hold water and it won't scale (imagine a beo... nope, too corny even for me). By the time we see the tail end of this one, it'll smell pretty fishy. I think the data has been salted. Whoever believes this one is smoking a lot of sea weed, and personally I've had enough to make my head swim! I think this needs to be sent to a watery grave before the sharks catch the smell.

      >> *shoots self for being so stupid*

      Me first!!
      • I'll say you're in deep! C'mon, is that the beast you can do? Why'd you clam up so quickly? I know I must seem a little crabby saying this, but you've left the door wide open for all the sharks here to whale on you, you clown! IMO you otter rethink your post, or else you'll have a great white bump on your head and you'll need an angel to nurse you back to health, tiger! And b/c this is /., as soon as they smell blood in the water, they'll move in for the krill and you'll be sorry, chum. Don't think yo

  • But have they found... (Score:4, Funny)

    by yerricde ( 125198 ) on Thursday October 23, 2003 @08:44PM (#7296849) Homepage Journal

    ...Nemo? [pineight.com]

  • It's amazing really. Have you ever opened a marine biology book or anything, and see just how many types of fish are already in there, and they all have names, been disected, etc? I would've thought this has already been done, no more than just a 'few' species left to discover on earth. I guess w/new technology we can go deeper further, etc?

    • Re:It's amazing (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Artifakt ( 700173 )
      Worldwide, in the last few years, I have seen several estimations on how many species wait to be discovered, prepared by various organizations of Taxonomists, Biologists, and such. These are always much larger than the general public expects. There are probably no more than a few large mammals, at very most, awaiting discovery, but there may be 100,000 species of insects not yet categorized, and there are probably a thousand types of birds, hundreds of frogs and thousands of amphibians and reptiles, and po
      • It's even been proposed that there are still over 50 large (not bacteria sized) parasites on humans that have never been entered into a textbook.

        I feel sorry for those poor grad students going out to "find" those missing parasites.
    • Isn't that the goal of any scientist? Explore the world, find new species, and kill them!
    • A few years ago, a team of Swedish scientists took a sample of soil from a coastal region (about 1 kilo from memory) and analysed the living materials (plants, insects, bacteria etc) and discovere between 4 and 5 thousand new species or sub-species. They then took the same size of sample from an inland region and discovered between 4 and 5 thousand different new life forms. We have absolutely no idea how many undiscovered species are on the planet, and cataloging them all will take generations.

  • dammit (Score:2, Funny)

    by morelife ( 213920 )
    How long have these scientists been keeping these fish TO THEMSELVES???
    • Lunch? Lunch is for the weak.

      ...and brunch is for the weakend!

      • Of course, if by the time you're weak you haven't already eaten or #prayed, you'd better hope that you don't encounter a mumak. (Damned mumaks.)
    • You bet scientist are keeping undescribed ("new") species of fish to themselves. The name of the person who wrote the original description is always associated with the species. Linneaus described the european pearch, so in scientific literature the name is given as Perca fluviatilis Linneaus.

      An ichtyologist I know were interviewed by a journalist during a collecting trip in South America. He held up a specimen of an undescribed fish he had just caught for a picture.

      Later, an unknown german guy read the
    • More importantly, how do they taste?

  • Maybe Domesday Book (Score:3, Informative)

    by ajf442 ( 139842 ) on Thursday October 23, 2003 @08:47PM (#7296879)
    Maybe they didn't mean Doomsday book. Maybe it should have been DOMESDAY book. The Domesday book was basically a census ordered by William the Conquerer about 20 years after the invasion.

    You can find out more at:

    http://www.domesdaybook.co.uk/

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday October 23, 2003 @08:48PM (#7296886)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • "...more than 15,000 species of fish" (Score:5, Funny)

    by PSaltyDS ( 467134 ) on Thursday October 23, 2003 @08:49PM (#7296889) Journal
    Tartar Sauce technology is just not keeping up! I'm going to sponsor open sauce recipies at SauceForge.

    Any technology distinguishable from magic is not suficiently advanced.
  • I'm not sure, but don't they mean the Domesday Book? The book of the record of English settlements?

    The book linked to in the article is some novel about a guy travelling back through time. I fail to see what this has to do with fish.

    • Star Trek VI obviously, wherein we pretty much wiped out all of the whales, some of which eat fish. There we go, now we've managed to make even less sense then slashdot posts normally do.

    • Re:Doomsday book? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Mattwolf7 ( 633112 )
      Wow that would be the best book ever! The complete Domesday book.

      "Farmer John: 10 Cows, 20 Chickens, 1 house, 1 Wife, 6 kids

      Farmer Paul: 20 Cows, 15 Chickens, 1 house, 1 Wife, 10 kids..."

      Wait a minute...

      The 1985 Project

      To mark the 900th anniversary of the Domesday Book in 1985, a new multimedia edition of Domesday was compiled and published in 1986. This included all the information from the original survey plus modern spellings of the place names, maps, and many color photos.

      It was produced in a partn

  • Recipes? (Score:3, Funny)

    by dreamchaser ( 49529 ) on Thursday October 23, 2003 @08:57PM (#7296943) Homepage Journal
    Are there recipes to go with all of these new fish?

    Thanks for all the fish!
    • Well, actually..

      I recently did a project on various species of fish, and we got most of our data from Fishbase [fishbase.org], which has, among other pieces of information, how the fish can be cooked.

  • were found on the premises of Troy McClure's [216.239.39.104] personal bedroom collection.
  • Let loose all those obscure Lovecraft refrences.

  • And so far... (Score:4, Funny)

    by The Munger ( 695154 ) on Thursday October 23, 2003 @08:59PM (#7296958) Homepage
    They've got 150 more to taste. Reports so far include 300 taste like chicken, and a few mysterious 'Tasty Wheats' flavoured oddities.

  • sweet, I'm heading to Red Lobster.

  • Fantastic news (Score:3, Funny)

    by TopShelf ( 92521 ) on Thursday October 23, 2003 @09:12PM (#7297016) Homepage Journal
    Just think what this will do for the menu at Long John Silvers!

  • Predicting the final count (Score:4, Interesting)

    by G4from128k ( 686170 ) on Thursday October 23, 2003 @09:13PM (#7297019)
    It would be interesting to estimate the total number of species of fish based on the trajectory of species counts. The trajectory probably follows some x% of remaining species are discovered on a yearly basis. A bit of linear regression on a transform of the species counts by year and a bit of calculus should provide a reasonable extrapolation.

    Of course a simple analytic model would probably not be accurate for a number of reasons. I am sure there are wastersheds that have not been adequately explored that harbor substantive numbers of unknown species (e.g., Burma). There's also the problem of duplicates. Then there are extinctions of both previously discovered and never-to-be discovered species.

    I know, I know, there's probably several papers in the academic literature on this and I'm just too lazy to look them up. But its fun to think about.
  • Great idea and all, but do they have to kill the fish when they catalogue them? Hmmm?
  • Emeril's latest book, "600 New Ways to Serve Fish" has just gone on sale.

  • how many of those fish are "darn good eatin'"? Now that's something worth cataloging...
  • Over 500 of the fish catalogued thus far are thought to be new to science.

    Ah, but are these 500 species of fish new to the kitchen? And are they good eating?

    I divide the world of living things (indeed, all things, living or otherwise) into two groups:
    edible, and inedible.

  • Fish Heads... (Score:3, Funny)

    by niko9 ( 315647 ) * on Thursday October 23, 2003 @09:21PM (#7297055)
    fish heads, roley poley fish heads, eat 500 more, yum. :)

    --
    • Fish heads fish heads roly poly fish heads
      Fish heads fish heads eat them up yum

      In the morning laughing happy fish heads
      In the evening floating in the soup

      Ask a fish head anything you want to
      They won't answer they can't talk

      I took a fish head out to see a movie
      Didn't have to pay to get it in

      They can't play baseball they don't wear sweaters
      They're not good dancers they don't play drums

      Roly poly fish heads are never seen drinking cappuccino
      In Italian restaurants with oriental women yeah
    • if you play that backwards it says 'she's evil, she's evil'
  • were eaten by scientists.

  • Good news! (Score:5, Funny)

    by dolo666 ( 195584 ) on Thursday October 23, 2003 @09:35PM (#7297114) Journal
    Now we have a ton of new fish for O'Reilly to stipple and use for cover art!
  • It seems that we are 'discovering' new species of something all the time - so either new species are being created or we're just doing a half-ass job in classification :)

    These species aren't exactly coming from places that we've never been before or anything. Too bad you don't really get to name the new species that you find :)
    • "It seems that we are 'discovering' new species of something all the time - so either new species are being created or we're just doing a half-ass job in classification :)"

      As much as non-biological science people think we know about the organisms on this planet, we really don't know jack. The reason we are always finding more species is a result of two different phases of taxonomic research; Alpha and Beta. Alpha taxonomy is that basic, initial "I found this and it is different" phase. Usually, this ha

    • True, we are discovering new species all of the time, but there are several reasons why.

      The first is that classifications are always changing. Scientists are always finding new methods/means to further divide an existing group of organisms based on some structure (existence of bones, arrangement of bones, habitat differentiation, etc.).

      If I remember correctly, during one lecture a professor mentioned that two fish, virtually identical in outward appearance, lived within several feet vertically of each

  • Known to live in the effluent from a nuclear plant.

    Blinky Fish [yahoo.com]

    Hedley

  • Good Start (Score:3, Informative)

    by toxic666 ( 529648 ) on Thursday October 23, 2003 @11:00PM (#7297495)
    The aquatic ecosystem is important for food and recreation. But fish populations are under stress worldwide. In the Netherlands, workers used to get their employers to provide lunch, but negotiated the maximum number of times per week salmon would be served. They couldn't get an employer to pay for salmon anymore.

    In North America, the Atlantic salmon is a farm FrankenFish, fed Fish Pellets until they are big and then pumped full of carrot extract to get that "natural" orange color before processing.

    While some of these species may seem insignificant, it is important to catalog and understand them to assess the health and viability of ecosystems.

    Then again, the whole world is slaughtering fish in the oceans to the point that the most productive fisheries are under serious pressure. So if we can wipe out ubiquitous species, how can we hope to preserve those in sensitive habitats that come under pressure?

    Well, at least we will have some descriptions and pictures.

    Just 2 cents from a catch and release, barbless hooks fly fisher.
    • I don't know why they don't just farm all the fish we eat anyway, just like they do with cows. The cows we eat now are nothing like anything you would find wild in nature. Why eat wild fish?

      And for heaven's sake would someone please start making farmed crabs so we don't have to eat anymore of that fake crab crap? It would probably be easier to have a crab farm than do all that stuff they do to make that fake crab crap.

      • Re:Good Start (Score:2, Informative)

        by Stachel ( 718095 )
        I don't know why they don't just farm all the fish we eat anyway, just like they do with cows.

        Farming of fish has its downsides, too. In this [nationalgeographic.com] article it is explained how escaping farmed salmon threaten the reproduction of wild salmon.

        Also, farmed salmon are fed pellets which are made from other sea-living critters, moving the threat of overfishing down the foodchain.
  • Well, was it one of the new ones? Or are they still looking in quake III?

  • 300 is a lot, but (Score:3, Informative)

    by G3ckoG33k ( 647276 ) on Friday October 24, 2003 @12:18AM (#7297757)
    Actually, there are 200 fish species described as new every year. And it has been like that for the last twenty years. BTW, check out www.fishbase.org, the best site there is on fish. H.U.G.E. database.

    Oh, some bragging rights on behalf of myself... I have described three new fish species myself; giving them scientific names and all that. :) No, I won't tell you their name; please, let G3ck0G33k have some his mysteries of his own. :)

  • As someone whose dietary intake of "meat" only includes fish, i don't eat chicken or red meat and therefore i consume fish almost daily, my main curiosity in that list is... i wonder which ones tastes better and are good for health...
  • Let me know when they find a babelfish.
  • I wonder if any of them resemble Blinky. I'm sure they could find several EXTREMELY um......unique.....species if they were to search the water around nuclear power plants. I won't be satisfied until I can eat a fish with three eyes on its head.

  • add to that this species of fish [msnbc.com] which was just discovered in the Good ole USA.
  • Should be enough food for days to come.
  • You should have SEEN the 600 that got away!

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