I found
this over at PLoS Biology, titled "A Holistic Approach to Marine Eco-Systems Biology" by the people over at
the Earth Microbiome Project. They are quite mad. They have the goal of sequencing the genome of every single species of microorganism (archaea, bacteria, protista, virus, even animals) on the planet. This is only possible due to new technology, metagenomic sequencing. They are able to grab a sample and concurrently sequence the genomes of every organism in the sample at the same time.
The paper in particular talks about their approach for grabbing samples from the ocean (during a 3 year expedition) and the methods they are using to determine the character of the microbiome. Not just the genes, but also the aggregate metabolism and modeling the ecosystems.
In summary, a very ambitious and awesome goal which uses very intricate and multidisciplinary methods which should greatly improve our understanding of life on Earth.