“Ocean Census” Officially Endorsed as UN Ocean Decade Program

The Nippon Foundation-Nekton Ocean Census, a global alliance dedicated to the discovery and protection of marine life, has been officially endorsed as a UN Ocean Decade program.

This recognition cements the project’s large-scale strategic science mission to transform our knowledge of life on Earth, Ocean Census said in a statement posted on its website.

Proclaimed in 2017 by the UN General Assembly, the Ocean Decade, formally called the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030), seeks to stimulate ocean science and knowledge generation to reverse the decline of the state of the ocean system and catalyze new opportunities for sustainable development of this massive marine ecosystem.

Ocean Census was launched by The Nippon Foundation and Nekton, a U.K.-based marine research institute, in April 2023 with the ambitious target of finding at least 100,000 new marine species in the first decade.

Mr. Mitsuyuki Unno, executive director of the foundation, said: “It’s estimated that 75-90% of the estimated 1-2 million marine species remain undiscovered. Ocean Census is a moonshot to discover ocean life, setting out to reach the next important milestone of 100,000 new species. If we can discover ocean life, we can help protect it. We have a race against time to discover new species before they are lost for future generations.”

Professor Alex Rogers, Ocean Census science director, commented: “The UN Ocean Decade’s mission to leverage ‘The science we need for the ocean we want’ is wholly aligned to our purpose, which brings together international partners to take on the global challenge to accelerate the discovery of new marine species to help combat the biodiversity crisis.”

Ocean Census is an open, global alliance which already contains scientists from more than 250 institutes and 40 international partners, including universities, museums, governments, businesses, civil societies and philanthropists.

Some of the partners include national marine institutes IFREMER  (France), JAMSTEC (Japan), NIWA (New Zealand), and IEO (Spain) alongside the UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC), World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS), Senckenberg Institute and the Schmidt Ocean Institute.

Major expeditions to discover ocean life have already been undertaken by Ocean Census and partners, including to the Arctic, central and eastern Pacific, Atlantic (Macaronesia–Canary Islands), and South Pacific, resulting in the discovery of hundreds of new species.

In order to expedite the process of species identification－a process which can take several years to complete－Ocean Census has developed a new approach known as “cyber-taxonomy” using 3D imaging, DNA sequencing and machine learning to enable scientists to identify new species in a matter of days, according to Dive Magazine, the world’s premium diving magazine.

Ensuring that the new data is accessible to decision-makers and scientists, Ocean Census is in the process of developing the Ocean Life Cyber-Biodiversity System, which was discussed at the 2024 Ocean Decade Conference in Barcelona, Spain, in April.

I sincerely hope that Ocean Census, with the added mandate as a UN Ocean Decade program, will create a closer and more robust alliance with the existing and potential partners around the world to achieve the ambitious goal of discovering 100,000 new marine species in the first decade.