Aquarium of the Pacific

Aquarium Event

Counting all the Fish in the Sea

From microbes to mammals, Arctic to Antarctic, abyss to surface, and near shore to mid-ocean, scientists from 80 countries are producing the first Census of Marine Life (http://www.coml.org).

The project, to be completed in 2010, will assess and explain the diversity, distribution, and abundance of marine life in our seas. The Census should also help identify threatened species and important nurseries and thus improve management of living marine resources, some of which have already been decimated. Jesse Ausubel, who helped initiate the Census, will report its progress and share the breathtaking beauty of discoveries made so far during his talk at the Aquarium of the Pacific.

Ausubel is a program director for the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and director of the Program for the Human Environment at The Rockefeller University in New York City as well as an adjunct faculty member at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. During the past decade he helped launch and lead three major international scientific programs in biodiversity science: the Census of Marine Life, the Barcode of Life Initiative (to develop short DNA identifiers for all species of animals and plants), and the Encyclopedia of Life (to create a webpage for all 1.8 million plants, animals, and fungi). Ausubel was also main organizer of the first UN World Climate Conference (Geneva, 1979), which substantially elevated global warming on scientific and political agendas.

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Ausubel in the Arctic.