Is there anything in the ocean that we have not discovered?

I am just curious. Could there be anything in the oceans of the world that has not been named and documented? I doubt there would be larger marine mammals or big fish type of species but what about smaller organisms? Can anyone shed light into this please? Thanks.

You want facts or opinions? In my opinion there is lots of stuff that is not scientifically documented yet. I have no facts to back this up. But i do regularly see something underwater that i can not find in my books. Maybe i have the wrong books, maybe i have not identified the creature properly?

It would be interesting to see some numbers regarding "new" species that have been documented in the last 50 years. Is there a trend? Is it slowing down? Has it stopped?

How would one know?

They just discovered a series of "new" land animals...deer..monkeys...large lizards...and found some kind of beaked whale or porpoise...so the likelihood of new ocean species is a multiple of that.

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Would everything that hasn't been discovered please raise a fin..

There is so much in the fabulous oceans we have not discovered.

CAPTAIN SINBAD:

I am just curious. Could there be anything in the oceans of the world that has not been named and documented? I doubt there would be larger marine mammals or big fish type of species but what about smaller organisms? Can anyone shed light into this please? Thanks.

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The short answer is yes.

The long answer is that with every deep dive new species are discovered. New species are discovered all the time on land of all sizes, birds, lizards, mammals, everything, all the time. There are new cetacean species discovered quite often actually. You don't have to dig deep to find all sorts of stuff we don't know.

CAPTAIN SINBAD:

I am just curious. Could there be anything in the oceans of the world that has not been named and documented? I doubt there would be larger marine mammals or big fish type of species but what about smaller organisms? Can anyone shed light into this please? Thanks.

Click to expand...

New species seem to be discovered on a daily basis.

I just saw a short movie from the Smithsonian Institute where they taged a 14 foot great white shark, the tag washed up on shore a short time later, they examined the data the tag collected and it showed the shark shortly after being tagged swam around for a week or so, they watched the temperatures recorded and postulated that it went deep then suddenly the waters around the shark went from something like 40 degrees to 78 degrees and stayed at that temperature for another week and the location moved up and down thousands of feet and over a distance of miles...

... the conclusion was the sudden change from 40 to 78 degrees and that the temperature stayed constant no matter the location or depth indicated the tag recording the inside body temperature of another marine animal, in other words the 14 foot great white was eaten by something and the something then swam around up and down for over a week before it pooped or spit out the tag.

There is currently no known species that would eat a 14 foot great white....

You may be interested in these factoids from the Census of marine Life, a ten-year global effort that only scratched the surface.
A Decade of Discovery
How many new species were discovered? Census scientists discovered and formally described an estimated 1,200 new species, with another 5,000 or so awaiting formal description. New species were discovered at a much faster rate than the capacity to describe them. While the discovery of a new species is always exciting, the greater contribution to our understanding of marine life is what Census scientists learned about the diversity and distribution of marine life in the global oceans.

How many different species live in the world’s oceans? Prior to the Census, the number of known species in the ocean was estimated at 230,000, but with the increased knowledge gained over the last decade, this estimate has been increased to nearly 250,000. Scientists believe that there as many as three times this number are yet to be discovered and named. The total number of marine species in the global ocean, excluding microbes, could surpass one million or more.

Mh370...