Peering deep into the sea, scientists are finding creatures more mysterious than many could have imagined.

At one site, nearly three kilometres deep in the Atlantic, shrimp were living around a vent that was releasing water heated to 407 C. Water surrounding the site was a chilly 2 C.

'Animals seem to have found a way to make a living just about everywhere.'— Jesse Ausubel of the Sloan Foundation

An underwater peak in the Coral Sea was home to a type of shrimp thought to have gone extinct 50 million years ago.

Nearly five kilometres beneath the Sargasso Sea, in the Atlantic, researchers collected a dozen new species eating each other or living on organic material that drifts down from above.

"Animals seem to have found a way to make a living just about everywhere," said Jesse Ausubel of the Sloan Foundation, discussing the findings of Year 6 of the census of marine life.

New life everywhere, scientist says

Added Ron O'Dor, a senior scientist with the census: "We can't find any place where we can't find anything new."

This year's update, released Sunday, is part of a study of life in the oceans scheduled for final publication in 2010. The census is an international effort supported by governments, divisions of the United Nations and private conservation organizations. About 2,000 researchers from 80 countries are participating.

Ausubel said there are almost 16,000 known species of marine fish and 70,000 kinds of marine animals. A couple of thousand have been discovered during the census.

The researchers conducted 19 ocean expeditions this year; a 20th continues in the Antarctic. In addition, they operated 128 nearshore sampling sites and, using satellites, followed more than 20 tagged species including sharks, squid, sea lions and albatross.

Highlights of the 2006 research included:

• Shrimp, clams and mussels living near the super-hot thermal vent in the Atlantic, where they face pulses of water that is near boiling despite shooting into the frigid sea.
• In the sea surrounding the Antarctic, a community of marine life shrouded in darkness beneath more than 488 metres of ice. Sampling of this remote ocean yielded more new species than familiar ones.
• Off the coast of New Jersey, 20 million fish swarming in a school the size of Manhattan.
• Finding alive and well in the Coral Sea Neoglyphea neocaledonica, a type of shrimp thought to have disappeared millions of years ago. Researchers nicknamed it the Jurassic shrimp.
• Satellite tracking of tagged sooty shearwaters that mapped the small birds' 69,000-kilometre search for food in a giant figure eight over the Pacific Ocean, from New Zealand via Polynesia to foraging grounds in Japan, Alaska and California and then back. The birds averaged 350 kilometres a day. In some cases, a breeding pair made the entire journey together.
• A new find, a 1.8-kilogram rock lobster discovered off Madagascar.
• A single-cell creature big enough to see, in the Nazare Canyon off Portugal. The fragile new species was found 4,000 metres deep. It is enclosed within a plate-like shell, four-tenths of an inch in diameter, composed of mineral grains.
• A new type of crab with a furry appearance, near Easter Island. It was so unusual it warranted a whole new family designation, Kiwaidae, named for Kiwa, the Polynesian goddess of shellfish. Its species name, hirsuta, means hairy.