Record Year for Marine Species Discoveries
According to Nippon Foundation–Nekton Ocean Census—a coalition of national and philanthropic marine institutes, museums, and universities—a record breaking 1,121 new marine species were discovered in 2025. This marks a 54% increase in marine species discoveries in a single year. The impressive results were achieved across 13 expeditions and nine species discovery workshops around the world.
“With many species at risk of disappearing before they are even documented, we are in a race against time to understand and protect ocean life,” said Dr. Michelle Taylor, head of science at Ocean Census, in a press release. “For too long, thousands of species have remained in a scientific ‘limbo’ because the pace of discovery couldn’t keep up. We are now breaking that bottleneck. By accelerating discovery and sharing data globally, we are not just finding new life, but generating the evidence needed to drive global science and policy at a critical moment.”
One of the primary reasons that explains this increase in new species discovery is the organization’s fast tracking of species’ formal descriptions. In the realm of science, “discovering” a new species is not merely the act of finding the animal in the wild, but also the sometimes-painstaking process in the lab determining without a shadow of a doubt that the critter is indeed a new, original species. This is when it is given its formal name and deemed officially “discovered”.
This process from finding a species to describing it formally has traditionally taken years, even a decade or more. But by streamlining the process with an emphasis on international collaboration, Nippon Foundation-Nekton Ocean Census seems to be innovating a new, much faster methodology that could lead to a genuine golden age of new marine species discovery.
The vast majority of these new species are marine invertebrates, notably corals (which are animals), crabs, shrimps, sea urchins, and anemones. These new animals have been found at depths ranging from the near surface to over four miles (21,120 feet) deep.
Among the more charismatic species touted is a “ghost shark” chimaera (an alien-looking deepwater fish), two rays, and a deepwater catshark first identified on a research expedition aboard the R/V Investigatorsupported by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) to the Coral Sea off Australia. That expedition alone yielded at least 110 new marine species discovered and described at the time of this writing, with possibly more like 200 total after the described process is fully complete.
Another expedition supported by the Japanese Agency of Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) explored the deep-sea ecosystems within the Japanese Exclusive Economic Zone. This expedition utilized the Shinkai 6500, a famous manned deep-sea diving submersible that’s completed more than 1,800 dives. Among the many strange beasties of the deep from this expedition was a polychaete worm (Dalhousiella yabukii, named after the principal investigator Dr. Akinori Yabuki) found on a volcanic seamount. This worm lives symbiotically within the intricate chambers of a glass sponge, a sea sponge that constructs a skeleton made of silica. Scientists described the new worm as living inside a “glass castle”.
One could go on to write an entire book about these new 1,121 fascinating animals. One well established consideration to biological collection from the field is “sampling bias”, basically the unavoidable phenomenon that whenever a scientist attempts to catch animals in the wild, his or her methodology will always be more effective at catching certain animals and less with others. For example, using a certain net will catch fish that swim at a certain depth, more slowly, are certain sizes, etc. and miss fish that behave differently and avoid that particular net. A scientist not aware of the sampling bias of this method might conclude that only the fish caught are down there, remaining completely ignorant of the faster, deeper, etc. fish that avoided the net in question.
To that end, notably absent from these new species are fast swimming, pelagic (open water/in the water column) species. Speculatively, the slow-moving research vessel surveys and diving methods have a sample bias for benthic (bottom dwelling) and slower animals. But finding and describing other kinds of animals—like large predatory squid—is probably a whole other ballgame that the scientific community hasn’t really figured out yet. Besides a handful of fleeting pictures and a few accidental catches by commercial fishermen, that realm of the deep largely remains a mystery.
In the meantime, the collaborative efforts of the Nippon Foundation-Nekton Ocean Census are clearly bearing fruit for the benefit of all humankind’s knowledge. Who knows what they’ll find this year? We can all look forward to the exciting discoveries.
