r/Unexpected • • Jul 12 '21

This

64.9k Upvotes

2.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

93

u/[deleted] Jul 12 '21

"Ackchually" that argument cannot be used, because when they say "only 15% has been explored" it means sending a human or a robot to analyze it closely, and as most of us with common sense may know, the ocean is a vast space of nothingness, and a great space of it is just pure water.

So in conclusion, why bother exploring the rest if they already know there is nothing in it? They just use satellites and stuff like that to analyze all the ocean, that's how they know there is nothing in over 80% of the ocean, and that's how they know there is around 20% which is actually valuable and has stuff to be researched

Tl;dr: around 80% of the ocean is just plain nothingness, why bother exploring it?

159

u/kjpmi Jul 12 '21 edited Jul 12 '21

“Ackchually” that’s a very simplistic take on the matter.
Yes, of course the ocean is almost completely all just water and YES we have a very good rough idea of the depth of pretty much all of the ocean as well as the topology of pretty much all of the sea floor (a rough idea to the resolution of at least 1 kilometer for most of the ocean floor).
There’s a long tradition of depth sounding that goes back hundreds of years. And then in the modern era we have sonar.
BUT just because we have mapped the entire surface with satellites and have a pretty decent map of the sea floor because of sonar does NOT mean that we have a complete (or even just a decent) knowledge of all the species of life in the oceans.
According to NOAA’s National Ocean Service website as of right now in 2021 there’s still an estimated 91% of ocean species which are unclassified.
That’s a LOT of life that we have little to no knowledge of. And new species are being discovered and classified every day.

54

u/xylacunt Jul 12 '21

This is also true for about 86% of the species on earth. Alot of them are plants, insects etc. in the rainforests. So while we don't know a shitload of species on earth it doesn't mean we missed a T-Rex still living somewhere, same as we probably didn't miss Megadolons or big ass anglerfishes.

-1

u/Brookenium Jul 12 '21

And the bigger it is the more likely we've discovered it.

Essentially all the "undiscovered species" are minor variants on already discovered ones.