The World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) was formed in 2008 to, as the name implies, create a single master list of all marine species. It turns out that the list was far more desperately needed than anyone would have guessed.

In 2014 alone, 1,451 new species were discovered and added to the list. Since the list was originally launched more than 1,000 new species of fish have been described. Among these species are 131 members of the goby family, a new barracuda from the Mediterranean and 122 new species of sharks and rays. In the last year two new species of dolphins, one from Brazil and the other from Australia, have been described.

At the same time, of the 419,000 species described in the scientific literature, almost half (190,400) have proven to be duplicates.

One species of sea snail the rough periwinkle (Littorina saxatilis), dubbed the “champion of taxonomic redundancy, had been described under 113 names. Another species, the Breadcrumb sponge (“Halichondria panacea”), had 56 different names.

“Most of us were surprised – we knew about the problem of synonyms, but we didn’t know the proportion was so high,” Jan Mees, the director of the Flanders Marine Institute and WoRMS co-chair, told Nature.

The number of living species in the registry is now 228,450. Of those, 86 percent are animals. The list includes 93 whales and dolphins, 816 squids, 1,800 sea stars, 8,900 clams and other aquatic mollusks and 18,000 species of fish. Kelp, bacteria, fungi, viruses, single sell organisms, seaweeds and other plants make up the remained of the list.

From here, the list should only increase. The researchers believe that nearly all of the duplicates have been weeded out of the system.

“This task is now near completion. All the historical data have been entered in the database; all the names that have become redundant over time have also been identified and documented. And now we have a system in place that can be used as a backbone for data management activities and for marine biodiversity research; and that can be updated by a consortium of taxonomists,” Mees told the BBC.

According to Mees the list is a considerable boost for science and encourages researchers to focus on regions that haven’t been as well explored to find new species.

WoRMS researchers believe that 10,000 additional species are in the worlds laboratories waiting to be described.

In total, there are an estimated 700,000 to 1 million marine species so the team at WoRMs should be busy for many years to come.

“It is humbling to realise that humankind has encountered and described only a fraction of our oceanic kin, perhaps as little as 11%. Sadly, we fear, many species will almost certainly disappear due to changing maritime conditions – especially warming, pollution and acidification – before we’ve had a chance to meet,” Mees told the Irish Independent.

WoRMS, headquartered at the Flanders Marine Institute in Ostend, Belgium, grew out of the European Register of Marine Species after reaching formal agreements with other biodiversity projects including the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

A searchable list of known marine species as well as photo galleries are available to the public at marinespecies.org.