Ocean’s gazillion

Study of past ocean life hints at large potential capacity

The oceans’ good old days may have been even better than biologists thought.

RIGHT WHALE An 1887 view of processing the carcass of a right whale is one of many documents allowing Census of Marine Life researchers to reconstruct glimpses of past ocean life and what happened to it. Courtesy of Census of Marine Life

That’s the picture emerging from an effort to reconstruct the history of marine populations using what environmental historian Poul Holm of Trinity College Dublin calls “eclectic methods.”