The census is now likely to pass that number and the new estimate is that there could be 20 million kinds of microbial critters at sea. Jane Qiu writes that when the project began in 2003, some 6,000 marine microbes were known and microbiologists predicted the true figure could be as much as 600,000. The Nature News Web site wraps the gee-whiz angle into a story about the marine census’s discovery of microbial species diversity orders of magnitude beyond what had been estimated. Analysis of samples revealed the mat was made of bacteria that use hydrogen sulfide and nitrates to get energy, much like microbes on hydrothermal vents. Resting on the bottom was “a big carpet of white grass with filaments sticking out and waving in the water,” The Independent‘s Steve Connor quoted a member of the expedition. It’s cold, dark and devoid of oxygen down there, but when scientists from the International Census of Marine Microbes sent a camera down on a remotely controlled submersible, they were stunned. (To the right is a micrograph of a thin slice of a mat sample.) As if people do science to discover the boring.Ĭomes now, via a news release (see Grist below), a team of researchers who say they have found a matted tangle of filamentous bacteria lying on the sea floor off Chile and Peru and covering an area as big as Greece, which is 151,000 square miles.
Critics of science journalism have long decried our propensity to write “gee whiz” stories.