Question: How many estimated species do you think there are of marine life in the ocean since scientists have only explored less than 5% of it?

Kathryn Schoenrock answered on 9 Nov 2017:

I think there is huge potential for new discoveries in the ocean! I think we estimate that 1 million species live there, but that is only counting animals and plants. We don’t include bacteria, fungus, or other microorganisms in those counts and these are really important species when it comes to food webs, climate change and more. When I was working in Antarctica I was doing an experiment on one species of red seaweed. When we were diving and looking for it we would often find in in 3 colors with similar shapes but they felt different. finally in my experiments I found they responded to the herbivores in different ways… in the end they were three different species, two which had never been properly named! That just shows you the more time you spend in the ocean the more species you will find!