Brimming Undersea MountainAn orange roughy glides over an undersea mountain, or "seamount," located off the eastern coast of New Zealand in a 2006 picture.Results from a five-year project to document and study the world's seamounts, called CenSeam, were released this week. The project is part of a larger endeavor, the decade-long Census of Marine Life, which aims to document all ocean flora and fauna. The census's final summary of up to 230,000 species will be released October 4.(Related census pictures: "Dragonfish, Fireworm, More Found by Sea Surveys.")

Scientists estimate there are about 30,000 seamounts – defined as undersea mountains rising more than 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) high – scattered throughout the world's oceans.

Yet fewer than 300 seamounts have been looked at in any detail, said Mireille Consalvey, a CenSeam project coordinator based in New Zealand.—Ker ThanCenSeam was funded by the Census of Marine Life, which was in turn partiially funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

Photograph courtesy NIWA