Dr. Jesse H. Ausubel, director of a ten-year census of marine life involving 3,000 scientists from 80 countries, presented the results on this date in 2010 at the Israel Academy of Sciences and the Humanities in Jerusalem. The census discovered 6,000 new species and varieties of marine life — including a species of blind lobsters that has been named after him. Ausubel is director of the program for the human environment at Rockefeller University in New York and program director for the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which supported the census. Ausubel was also a main organizer of the first United Nations World Climate Conference in 1979, which elevated the issue of global climate change in the scientific and political communities of the world.
“The census researchers discovered the first animal that lives without oxygen. They found species alive that were thought to have gone extinct in the Jurassic period. They detected a species of oyster that lives as long as 500 years, and tube worms 600 years old.” —Nicholas Wade, New York Times