New findings about the marine life show that there are 7,500 species living in the Antarctic and 5,500 in the Arctic. Researchers believe that the tracking of these species through the Census of Marine Life released on Monday represents a great improvement to science. Yet, the most spectacular thing is that dozens of species are common to both polar seas.

Even if the poles are separated by almost 11,000 kilometers, they still host same species of invertebrates, which are the animals without back bones. According to these new findings, the number of jellyfish-like Arctic ctenophore got doubled. One of these species looks like an orange and lives at 1.2 miles depth in the ocean.

Also a sea spider species was found at both polar ends, living at a depth of 3,000 meters. Victoria Wadley, a researcher from the Australian Antarctic Division who took part in the Antarctic survey, stated that the textbooks usually speak about less diversity at the poles than the tropics. As she also admitted, the new researches showed that there is a lot of richness in the marine life both in the Antarctic and the Arctic oceans.

The big number of species found recently showed that we knew so little about the real marine life, according to Gilly Llewellyn, leader of the oceans program for the environmental group WWF-Australia. She added that this research has helped in revealing the amazing biodiversity of which we had had no idea.

At least 500 researchers from 25 countries took part in the survey which took place during the International Polar Year which ran in 2007-2008. Five whale species, 100 species of crustaceans and six sea birds, among other 235 species were found in both polar ends.