Scientists logged 1,121 brand-new ocean species in a single year, including a ghost shark and a carnivorous ‘death ball’ sponge

A multi-year effort called the Ocean Census has added 1,121 species new to science to the marine record, all cataloged over a single twelve-month survey period. That tally includes a rarely seen deep-sea chimaera known as a ghost shark and a carnivorous sponge nicknamed the death ball, and it reflects a pace of species discovery that even specialists in marine taxonomy consider remarkable.

The Scale of the Ocean Census Tally

The 1,121 species catalogued across the survey period stands as one of the largest single-year hauls of newly described marine life on record, drawn from expeditions run under the Ocean Census program, a global initiative built specifically to speed up the identification of undocumented ocean species. Formal description of a species, which requires detailed comparison against known relatives and publication in the scientific literature, is normally a slow process, and a total in the thousands within a year signals a deliberate push to shorten that pipeline rather than a one-off surge.

Historically, adding a new marine species to the scientific record could take years from initial collection to formal publication, since a single researcher or small team often had to handle everything from specimen preservation to peer review largely alone. Pooling specimens and expertise across an entire program, rather than leaving each discovery to an individual lab, is the main structural change behind totals reaching into the thousands within a single survey period rather than the dozens more typical of past decades.

A Ghost Shark and a ‘Death Ball’ Sponge Among the Finds

Among the newly logged species is a ghost shark, the common name for a chimaera, a cartilaginous fish related to sharks and rays that typically lives in deep, cold water and is rarely seen alive. Another is a carnivorous sponge that researchers gave the working nickname “death ball,” a reference to its method of trapping small crustaceans with hooked structures rather than filter-feeding the way most sponges do, according to coverage from Scientific American. Carnivorous sponges are themselves an unusual branch of the sponge family, found mostly in deep-sea environments where filter-feeding yields too little food to sustain them.

Chimaeras as a group are considered some of the least-studied cartilaginous fish precisely because they live at depths and in habitats that are difficult and expensive to survey repeatedly, which means even a single well-documented specimen can meaningfully expand what is known about the group. The nickname given to the carnivorous sponge reflects a broader pattern in deep-sea taxonomy, where researchers often describe a striking or unusual feature in plain language well before the organism receives its formal scientific name.

Thirteen Expeditions Across the World’s Oceans

The species came from 13 separate expeditions spread across different ocean basins, each contributing specimens and imagery that taxonomists then worked through to confirm which finds were genuinely new to science rather than already-described species turning up in a new location. Running that many coordinated expeditions in a single survey period is itself a logistical undertaking, requiring ship time, deep-sea sampling equipment and specialist taxonomists across multiple institutions, as detailed in the Ocean Census program’s own account of the survey.

Spreading expeditions across multiple ocean basins rather than concentrating repeated trips in one region also helps guard against sampling bias, since marine life varies enormously between, for instance, a tropical reef system and a cold subpolar seamount. That geographic spread is part of why a single survey period can include creatures as different as a deep-water chimaera and a specialized carnivorous sponge, each adapted to conditions found in very different parts of the world’s oceans.

Why So Much of Ocean Life Remains Undescribed

Marine biologists have long estimated that a large share of ocean species, particularly those living below the reach of sunlight, have never been formally described, simply because so much of the deep ocean has never been sampled. Surveying that environment requires specialized vessels and submersibles capable of reaching thousands of meters down, which limits how much of the seafloor any single research program can cover even with sustained funding. Programs like the Ocean Census exist largely to close that gap faster than the traditional, expedition-by-expedition pace of marine taxonomy has managed on its own.

How a Species Earns Formal Recognition

A specimen collected on an expedition does not count as a new species until it clears a formal review: comparison against museum records and genetic databases, a detailed physical description, and publication that assigns it a scientific name. That process is why totals logged during a survey period are usually described as species brought to the point of description rather than fully named on the spot, with formal naming and publication continuing well after the expeditions themselves have ended. It also means the final count tied to a given survey window can keep growing for months as more specimens work through review.

That lag between collection and formal naming is one reason large discovery totals tend to be reported first as programmatic milestones, tied to a survey period or expedition series, rather than as a single finished catalog. Readers encountering a figure like 1,121 new species should generally expect the fully published, individually named list to keep expanding gradually rather than arriving all at once.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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