The completion of a 10-year, US$650-million project to record ocean biodiversity was announced at a symposium in London on 4 October. Begun in 2000, the Census of Marine Life employed more than 2,700 scientists to catalogue the diversity, distribution and abundance of life in the world's seas. It has logged nearly 30 million observations and has described more than 1,000 new species - such as the 'Yeti crab' Kiwa hirsuta (pictured, right), discovered in 2005. Despite such successes, the organization that got the project started - the Sloan Foundation in New York- is not funding a second census, and no other major sponsors have stepped up (see Nature 467, 514-515; 2010).
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