Scientists from around the world, including a team from Maine, are gathering in London to unveil the results of a 10-year global study of ocean life. According to them they had found a new species of fish and other creatures and advanced the understanding of ocean dynamics and ecology.
Lewis Incze, a scientist at the University of Southern Maine who led the effort in the Gulf of Maine, told that nearly 200 scientists from Maine and Canada contributed to the Gulf of Maine research, which was funded primarily by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Research cruises and submarine expeditions found previously unidentified species, including corals living nearly a mile beneath the surface just outside the gulf.
In this research scientists claimed that they had better understanding of natural cycles in the gulf that affects life, from tiny plankton to massive whales. Some of Incze’s research, for example, focused on plankton and whales on Platts Bank, a small underwater mountain more than 30 miles east of Cape Elizabeth.
Incze’s team measured invisible underwater waves that flow across the bank and create surface surges that push floating plankton around in ways that seem unpredictable, except to the whales that eat it. The census also showed that the entire Gulf of Maine, from the intertidal zone to deep basins, has been affected by humans. Incze said that there are still lots of things not known about the gulf. The census showed that the Gulf of Maine is home to more than 4,000 named species, ranging from microscopic plankton to 70-foot fin whales.
