The vaquita, or little cow, is a species of porpoise and is perhaps the most endangered ocean creature on the planet. They live in the Gulf of California and there are less than 30 of them left on the planet.
Besides fish, the study suggests there are as many as eight undiscovered whale and dolphin species, 10 undescribed marine reptiles, and thousands of sponges, crustaceans, algae, plants, and other species still to be found.
Six hundred and sixty million–year–old fossils suggest sponges were among first species to populate sea.
“The intense pressures in the deep ocean make it an extremely difficult environment to explore.” Although you don't notice it, the pressure of the air pushing down on your body at sea level is about 15 pounds per square inch. If you went up into space, above the Earth's atmosphere, the pressure would decrease to zero.
In fact, most of the waters remain unexplored, uncharted and unseen by our eyes. It might be shocking to find out, but only 5% of the ocean has been explored and charted by humans. The rest, especially its depths, are still unknown.
While the blue whale is the overall-largest creature of the sea, the lion's mane jellyfish goes to the top of the list for being the longest. These languid beauties have tentacles that reach an astonishing 120 feet in length. 3 It's hard to know why they are graced with such extraordinary appendages.
A giant isopod (Bathynomus giganteus) may reach up to 0.76 m (2 ft 6 in) in length. A Japanese spider crab whose outstretched legs measured 3.7 m (12 ft) across. A robust clubhook squid, whose mantle reaches 2 m (6 ft 7 in) in length, caught off Alaska. A 7 m (23 ft) king of herrings oarfish, caught off California.
Currently, less than ten percent of the global ocean is mapped using modern sonar technology. For the ocean and coastal waters of the United States, only about 35 percent has been mapped with modern methods.
Despite modern technologies, only 5 percent of the oceans have been explored. As such, the remaining 95 percent remains untouched, unseen, and undiscovered to date. Regarding marine species, scientists have yet to discover how many exist in the oceans. Currently, around 226,000 ocean species are known.
Last year an expedition to the Mariana Trench made history by conducting the deepest crewed dive ever completed as it descended 10,927 metres into the Challenger Deep.
Oceans are home to seahorses, dolphins, whales, corals, and many other living creatures. Oceans are our planet's life support as they provide water, food and help regulate the weather.
Thanks to a diamond a subterranean ocean has been found
This evidence adds weight to an existing theory by which it is thought that a huge ocean is suspended between the upper and lower mantle of the Earth, in the deepest recesses of our planet's core.
The Lost City Hydrothermal Field, often referred to simply as Lost City, is an area of marine alkaline hydrothermal vents located on the Atlantis Massif at the intersection between the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and the Atlantis Transform Fault, in the Atlantic Ocean.
Unlike mapping the land, we can't measure the landscape of the sea floor directly from satellites using radar, because sea water blocks those radio waves. But satellites can use radar to measure the height of the sea's surface very accurately.
Victor Vescovo journeyed 10,927 meters (35,853 feet) to the bottom of the Challenger Deep , the southern end of the Pacific Ocean's Mariana Trench, as part of a mission to chart the world's deepest underwater places.
The first marine dinosaurs appeared about 252 million years ago during the Triassic period. They were mainly plesiosaurs with long necks and ichthyosaurs, also known as fish lizards. About 200 million years ago, the Great Permian Extinction decimated about 95% of all ocean life.
The ocean formed billions of years ago.
Over vast periods of time, our primitive ocean formed. Water remained a gas until the Earth cooled below 212 degrees Fahrenheit . At this time, about 3.8 billion years ago, the water condensed into rain which filled the basins that we now know as our world ocean.
It is 11,034 meters (36,201 feet) deep, which is almost 7 miles. Tell students that if you placed Mount Everest at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the peak would still be 2,133 meters (7,000 feet) below sea level.