New species

An average of about 1400 new marine species are newly described each year worldwide. A surprising high number of these (137) are from European waters, which one might have assumed were so well studied that they contained no surprises. These new species include all fyla, from microbes such as bacteria up to vertebrates. The majority of newly described species are invertebrates, partly because the formal process of naming new bacteria lags far behind the rate of their discovery.