Europe alone has so much unpublished, un-catalogued biological data that it is challenging to take surveys and estimates about extinction risk and the Marine Strategy Framework Directive and the EU's claim it will protect 30 percent of land and sea by 2030 seriously. 

A new paper revealed government's don't even know what they are not protecting already. The work revealed 40 years of gathered but never published data on marine amphipods - crustaceans - just in Italy. One type of crustacean in one country isn't even understood yet.

Unpublished records of 4,344 studies from 1980 to 2025 show that even Italians, famous for understanding water life, can't yet comprehend bioindicators like amphipods which recycle nutrients, connect food webs, and serve as prey for fish, birds, and mammals. 



They found 11 alien species in ports, lagoons, and aquaculture facilities. It's impossible to track biodiversity loss, identify vulnerable habitats, or design effective protection strategies when no one even knows what it being protected. It instead falls to activists to allege species like bees are dying, based on estimates created by their employees.

The full dataset is now accessible via the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF)

Citation: 
Badalucco A, Auriemma R, Balistreri P, Baratti M, Bonifazi A, Capillo G, Cimmaruta R, Coccia I, D'Amore A, Desiderato A, D'Iglio C, Grech D, Iaciofano D, Lattanzi L, Lezzi M, Lionello M, Macaluso E, Mancini E, Martino C, Marusso V, Mercurio M, Mucciolo S, Prato E, Pulieri M, Puthod P, Scipione MB, Scirocco T, Sirchia B, Specchiulli A, Targusi M, Trabucco B, Vannucci A, Rosati I, Lo Brutto S (2026) A contribution to the inventory of marine amphipod species from Italian waters based on unpublished sources and FAIR principles. Biodiversity Data Journal 14: e189256. https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.14.e189256