The ocean is still giving up surprises. A global research effort says it identified 1,121 new marine species in the past year, even though scientists have directly seen less than 0.001 percent of the seafloor.
The Ocean Census Alliance reported the finds after 13 expeditions and nine workshops aimed at identifying and categorising marine life more quickly. Michelle Taylor, head of science at the Ocean Census Alliance, said speeding up that process matters.
“I think trying to speed that process up is very important,” she said. “Then that information is available … for conservation measures, for taxonomists and for just knowing what’s out there.”
On average, more than 13 years pass between collecting an unidentified specimen and formally describing it as a new species. For less-studied organisms such as sea sponges, that can take even longer.
Scientists estimated in 2011 that as much as 91 percent of ocean species remained undiscovered. At the current pace, fully describing marine life would take centuries.
The Ocean Census Alliance has spent the past three years working with taxonomists around the world to speed that up. Its open-access data platform, Ocean Census NOVA, now includes thousands of entries on previously unknown species from the deep.
The 1,121 new species identified between mid-2025 and mid-2026 marks a 54 percent increase in annual identifications.
Among the finds were vividly striped ribbon worms off East Timor that researchers suspect could contain toxins that may lead to new treatments for human diseases.
Off Japan, researchers in a human-operated submersible found spiky sponges with skeletons made of clear, glasslike silica. Inside them, they found a new species of transparent polychaete worms that provide the sponges with nutrients.
“Some of those polychaetes also bioluminesce, [or glow], so I just love the idea that there’s these crystalline glass castles of sponges, and they’re probably twinkling at each other,” Taylor said.
Most of the species were identified without fresh ocean expeditions. Of the 1,121 total, 728 came from teams working through museum archives and their own collections of specimens that had not yet been identified.
To confirm a new species, researchers analyse specimens with microscopes, scans, dissections and DNA testing, then produce drawings and careful descriptions. Taylor said the work depends on specialist knowledge across many groups of organisms.
“This takes a huge global village to contribute toward the 1,121 species that were discovered,” she said. “I’m constantly amazed about the things that we find in our marine environment, it’s magical.”
Read more from Scientific American.
