Not so long ago in our history, the ocean was regarded primarily as a surface for commerce. Now there is more awareness that we are only beginning to know and understand the oceans. The astonishing rates at which new marine life and processes are being discovered testify to this. The phylum Loricifera was described only in 1983 as a result of the discovery of a single species, Nanaloricus mysticus, a small organism that lives in the sediment (Kristensen, 1983). The 5-meter-long mega-mouth shark Megachasma pelagios is known from but two specimens caught in only the last decade. An entirely new habitat—ocean vents, such as the sulfide chimneys called “black smokers”—contains species that were unknown until the last half decade or so. The productivity of some marine systems may have been underestimated by half due to our ignorance of the role played by bacterioplankton and to the lack of appropriate methods of measurement. Also, it has recently been revealed that wave energy creates the most productive ecosystems yet discovered, twice that of the most productive tropical forests (Leigh et al., 1987). How must we respond to all this? Clearly, we must intensify our research and communicate our findings rapidly to the public.

The goal of future efforts to address biodiversity must not be merely the compilation of lists of species. Though one must be sympathetic to intensive efforts to find out how much species diversity exists, there is no substitute for learning how systems work, the implications of their characteristic diversity, and the role individual species play. That is, I see our task not as species inventory, but more as ecological discovery. The description of species is not sufficient. Rather, we need to identify the species that are important contributors to ecosystem processes, that

FIGURE 4–8 Walruses (Odobenus rosmarus) in the Bering Sea. Birds and mammals such as these predominate in polar regions. Photo by G.Carleton Ray.