Hawai'i-based scientists report finding amazing new species of coral and sponges in the massive ocean sanctuary called the Papahänaumokuäkea Marine National Monument, a conservation area so vast that it has more vowels in its name than any other marine sanctuary in the world.

Diving a mile deep in a submersible operated by the Hawai'i Undersea Research Laboratory, biologists discovered sponges so weird and new that they invoked the name of one of the world's greatest naturalists and cataloger of many strange life forms. According to a news account, on first seeing the sponges from the submersible Pisces IV, an observer erupted "It looks like something out of Dr. Seuss!" I don't know why that fellow should have been surprised. Dr. Seuss was in the forefront of the study of unique ocean creatures, as revealed in his celebrated treatise "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish." He didn't limit his study to only ocean life forms — he was the first to reveal the existence of a thieving, angry, furry biped he dubbed a "grinch."

Since the establishment of the 139,797-square-mile conservation area northwest of Hawai'i a few years ago, scientists fully expected to bravely go where no oceanographers had gone before and discover new, strange critters and plant life. The coral reefs of Papahänaumokuäkea are referred to as "the rainforests of the sea" and are thought to have more than 7,000 marine species. (If you think the rainforests of the Amazon are wet, you haven't been to an underwater rain forest.)

The discovery of new species of life in this monument should remind us not to get too hot and bothered when some shrieking, overwrought environmental grinches claim humans are going to wipe out one-quarter of all living species on the Earth. That's exactly what one naturalist did in a book published in 1979. Norman Meyers said the Earth "could lose one-quarter of all species by the year 2000." Bzzzz. Wrong. How can anyone predict what percentage of species mankind is going to wipe out when we don't even know how many species there are? Some of the smartest people in the world used to think there were only about 5 million species of life on Earth. Then they discovered there are more than 5 million types of beetles, spiders and other bitey things in rainforests alone.

Now, I'm not sure what the discovery of these new sponges in the Pacific will mean for humans. Hopefully — for them, anyway — they won't taste like lobster or cheeseburgers. But it tells us that the world is a lot more complex than we thought, with a lot of life out there doing pretty well in spite of the fact that the planet is infested with humans. Dire warnings that man is killing a certain percentage of all living species should be taken with a grain of saltwater.