Deep ocean trawl nets new 'bugs'

A three-week voyage of discovery in the Atlantic has returned with tiny animals which appear new to science.

They include waif-like plankton with delicate translucent bodies related to jellyfish, hundreds of microscopic shrimps, and several kinds of fish.

The voyage is part of the ongoing Census of Marine Life (CoML) which aims to map ocean life throughout the world.

Plankton form the base of many marine food chains, and some populations are being disrupted by climatic change.

Zooplankton are tiny marine animals. Many live on floating plants (phytoplankton), and many are in turn eaten by fish, mammals and crustaceans.

One of the aims of the Census of Marine Zooplankton (CoMZ), part of CoML, is to provide a global inventory of these tiny organisms which will help scientists look for changes induced by climate variations or other factors

"The deep ocean below 1,000m (3,300ft) is rarely sampled," observed Peter Wiebe from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the US, lead scientist on the recent voyage.

"It's very difficult, you need many thousands of metres of cable," he told the BBC News website. "We were able to sample at 1,000m intervals down to 5,000m (16,500 ft)." Deep ocean trawl nets new 'bugs'

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