Counting begins in the world's deep blue seas

Scientists have embarked on a $1-billion project to inventory what lives in the ocean.

KACHEMAK BAY, Alaska - Brenda Konar shoots an anxious glance over her shoulder but keeps chiseling. The Pacific Ocean hasn't gone away. It's gaining on her.

Wedged between slimy boulders, the marine biologist hacks at the crusty stuff clinging to the ragged shoreline of the Kenai Peninsula. Frigid seawater seeps through the duct tape patch on her rubber waders. Her knuckles bleed.

Soon, the world's second-largest tides will submerge this speck called Cohen's Island, 250 miles southwest of Anchorage.

"We're in so much trouble," Konar mutters into the wind and rain.

Halfway around the world, Mike Vecchione shudders as Russian deckhands slap the metal hull of his tiny submarine. In any language, that echo means "Good to go!"

To where? Two slow, dark miles to the bottom of the North Atlantic, to a spot disconcertingly named the "Charley Gibbs Fracture Zone." The pressure down there would crumple a truck.

The Smithsonian biologist curls on a cushion as a crane dangles his vessel over the ocean like a drip from a faucet.

"I can't believe I'm doing this," he whispers.

From pole to pole, in virtually every ocean, scientists from two dozen nations are wrapping up preliminary field studies. Together the studies will serve as the foundation for the most extensive project of its kind - the Census of Marine Life.

The census seeks a fundamental understanding of all life that relies on the largely unexplored seas covering most of Earth, increasingly beleaguered by pollution, overfishing and climate change.

This unprecedented field guide to millions of species is supposed to be completed in 10 years. It could cost as much as $1-billion, much of it paid for by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and governments.

It's a staggering budget. But it's a fraction of the $55-billion seafood trade or what it costs to clean up a major oil spill.

The census is divided into seven topics. Besides Pacific shorelines and the North Atlantic sea floor, scientists are examining the Gulf of Maine, hydrothermal vents, coastal salmon runs, the worldwide habits of large fish and mammals and animals of the abyss.

"We're asking scientists to think beyond their own quarter-mile of beach," said Ronald O'Dor, a Nova Scotia squid expert who has moved to Washington to coordinate the census. "We don't know what we'll find. We don't even know what we are looking for."

Scientists expect the census will shed new light on Earth's fundamental processes, like evolution and climate. But others expect it will serve more practical purposes.

Environmentalists will use it to identify threatened species and locations for marine parks. Fishing and shipping interests believe the observations will make them more efficient - and profitable. And bioprospectors hope the census will yield a bounty of new materials and compounds, ranging from medicines to industrial adhesives.

The census begins in earnest at a time when the ocean's bounty suddenly appears alarmingly skimpy. Large fish have been depleted by 90 percent since World War II.

"People think of space being the final frontier, but most of our planet is very poorly known," Vecchione said. "You can't protect something that you don't understand and you can't use something that you haven't inventoried."

The most startling results have come from the fish-taggers.

Biologists attach digital instruments to the backs of the oceans' most athletic swimmers and fearsome hunters. Known collectively as pelagics, these sharks, tuna, humpback whales, elephant seals, Humboldt squid, even sea turtles are tracked by satellite on their mysterious journeys.

Early data from 700 Atlantic bluefin tuna demonstrate that fish from different regions commingle freely during migrations ranging from the Texas coast to the Mediterranean.

The results smash assumptions that bluefin populations never mix, and that fleets can intensively harvest particular regions, such as the Flemish Cap off Canada, without harming stocks throughout the hemisphere.

The stakes are huge. Globally, 3-million tons of tuna are processed annually. A single bluefin weighs more than an NFL lineman and fetches $175,000 at Tokyo's seafood market.

But the bluefin population has been plummeting since the 1980s. International commissions are using tagging data to establish more restrictive quotas globally.

This fall, scientists will begin tracking thousands of additional pelagics to address broader scientific questions.

Among them: In the vastness of the oceans, does marine life scatter or does it behave similarly to terrestrial life and congregate?

Early tagging data suggests some surprising similarities.

"There are hints of shared corridors that different animals are using and places they will loiter, like watering holes," said biologist Randy Kochevar of the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

In Alaska, shoreline studies by Konar and her research partner, Katrin Iken, wrestle with another problem: too many samples.

The University of Alaska biologists laboriously sample Cohen's and Elephant islands in the bay with the help of a dozen students.

Others will use similar methods to examine shorelines in Russia, Japan, Thailand, Chile and Antarctica. Most of the world's population and industry are crowded along coastlines, so when catastrophe strikes, those regions suffer the most.

Again, high stakes. Exxon spent $9-billion trying to clean 1,500 miles of coastline after the Exxon Valdez spilled 11-million gallons of crude oil in Prince William Sound.

During high tide at Kachemak Bay, Konar and Iken scuba-dive about 30 feet down to where life always is submerged. "We pull up laundry bags full of kelp," Konar says.

Within minutes, the tide and the storm swallow their sites. After a hard boat ride back to the mainland, the real census work begins.

Late into the chilly night, Konar and Iken record their catch under the glaring lights of a laboratory shed. Much of it resembles what's rotting at the bottom of your refrigerator. The women keep the door and windows open, and their coats zipped.

"I like the big picture," Iken says, waving tweezers and spinning her census dream. "I want to compare this with a site in California. And Chile.

"And did you know that nobody is working on gelatinous bioplankton?"

Konar nods. At her elbow rest 20 more buckets.

Through the open door, they can hear the tide racing out again.

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