– How do scientists know that a sea creature is extinct or endangered if they haven’t explored 80% of the sea?
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Proving things don’t exist tends to be very hard, or flat out impossible.
In the case of an extinct animal, you’d have to check every single possible location it could possibly be at. You’d also have to check them all at the same time to ensure the animal didn’t just move to a location you already checked. Basically, it’s impossible.
So science just takes the reasonable approach and goes “this animal hasn’t been seen for X years, so it’s probably extinct. That X goes up or down depending on how likely it should be for someone to have seen the animal.
Is it a big, diurnal animal that lives in densely populated areas? Probably should be spotted fairly often, so going a couple years without a single sighting means something. On the other hand, is it some deep sea creature that lives in an habitat humans never enter? It’s probably normal to go decades without seeing one.
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