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The International Ocean Biogeographic
Information System (OBIS)
The International Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS) is an international network of
organizations aiming to make marine biogeographic data, from all over the world, freely available over
the internet. Created by the Census of Marine Life, OBIS is now part of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic
Commission (IOC) of UNESCO, under its International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange (IODE) programme.
OBIS aims to build the most comprehensive gateway to the World's Ocean Biodiversity and Biogeographic data and
information required to address pressing coastal and world ocean concerns. It will achieve this by building and
maintaining a global alliance that collaborates with scientific communities to facilitate free and open access to, and
application of, biodiversity and biogeographic data and information on marine life.
In June 2009, the IOC-UNESCO Member States adopted the Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS), which
was initiated by the decade long Census of Marine Life – a $650 million foundation-led program to document what
lived, lives and will live in the ocean. OBIS was the information component of the Census and is an important
scientific data legacy that now continues to grow under the auspices of IOC-UNESCO.
Currently, OBIS holds 38 million observations of 115,000 marine species in all ocean basins and at all depths,
provided by 500 institutions in 56 countries.
The international OBIS secretariat builds and maintains the central database and online data portal, and provides
training and technical assistance, guides new data standards and technical developments, and encourages
international cooperation to foster the group benefits of the global network.
Jointly with other IOC programmes (such as GOOS 1, ICAM2 and HAB3), OBIS will strive to develop a global ocean
observing framework for monitoring the state of marine biological species diversity, populations and habitats, to
assess risks and impacts on ecosystem services and to underpin an ecosystem approach for marine spatial planning
and conservation policies for the protection and sustainable management of the ocean.
OBIS will provide the infrastructure and knowledge base necessary to predict or early detect emerging issues such
as marine invasive species, harmful algal blooms, shifts in abundance and species distribution ranges, extinction
risks of species, species composition or regime shifts, and loss or degradation of marine habitats.
OBIS will build the historical baseline, against which future change can be measured. It will close the data gap by
growing in terms of geographic, taxonomic and temporal coverage, as well as expanding in capturing additional
data types and information.
OBIS' Objectives
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The Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS) http://www.ioc-goos.org/
Integrated Coastal Area Management (ICAM) http://www.unesco.org/new/en/natural-sciences/priorityareas/sids/natural-resources/coastal-marine-resources/integrated-coastal-area-management/
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Harmful Algal Bloom Program (HAB) http://hab.ioc-unesco.org/
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OBIS will:
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Provide the world's largest scientific knowledge base on the diversity, distribution and abundance of all
marine organisms in an integrated and standardized format.
Facilitate the integration of biogeographic information with physical and chemical environmental data, in
collaboration with IOC/IODE's Ocean Data Portal.
Contribute to a concerted global approach to marine biodiversity and ecosystem monitoring through
guidelines on standards and best practices, including globally agreed Essential Ocean Variables, observing
plans, and indicators in collaboration with other IOC programs.
Support the assessment of the state of marine biological diversity to better inform policy makers, and
respond to the needs of regional and global processes such as the World Ocean Assessment (WOA) and
the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystems Services (IPBES).
Provide information and guidance on the use of biodiversity data for education and research and provide
state of the art web services to society including decision makers.
Provide data, information and tools to support the identification of biologically important or vulnerable
marine and coastal habitats, for the development of marine spatial plans and other area-based
management actions.
Increase Member States, institutional and professional capacity in marine biodiversity and ecosystem data
collection, management, analysis and reporting tools, as part of IOC-UNESCOs International
Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange (IODE) Ocean Teacher Global Academy.
Provide a platform for international collaboration between national and regional marine biodiversity and
ecosystem monitoring programmes, enhancing Member States and global contributions to inter alia, the
Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS) and the Global Earth Observing System of Systems (GEOSS).
Data are provided to OBIS via OBIS nodes. Technically speaking an OBIS node should:
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Providing multiple datasets in a standard format (Darwin Core Archive) for harvesting by the international
OBIS node, which is hosted at the IOC project office for IODE
Having complete and good quality data and metadata for each dataset
Regular updates to the datasets where possible
Set up an IPT Server to serve the datasets (or use the IPT server of iOBIS to upload datasets).
Every institution, project or initiative can apply to become a node of OBIS or they can work closely with a regional
node. For international groups the recommended route is for data to flow through the regional node located in the
organization’s headquarters area. NAFO Headquarters being located in Dartmouth, NS would collaborate with
OBIS Canada hosted by Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography (also located
in Dartmouth).
The main functions of OBIS Canada are to foster the on-line provision of marine species data from the Canadian
region into the OBIS portal, to promote OBIS as a valuable source of data that spans geographic, political and
organizational boundaries and to encourage implementation of best practices related to data management of
marine species distribution data.
OBIS includes data from the 19th century to the present, and covers distribution of approximately 9000
species of algae, fish invertebrates and marine mammals, based on 1.1 million records
Representation of the Grand Banks is good, with over 450 species from in excess of 22 000 records being
reported (figure 1). The database is fully searchable, by scientific or common name, at a range of
taxonomic levels (figure 2).
The NAFO Secretariat has begun working with OBIS Canada to make available any data archived at the
Secretariat. This has included historical catch records, STATLANT data, information in archived
Scientific Council reports and journal articles, and tag release information.
OBIS would like to promote itself to the Scientific Council. OBIS can provide data of use in
understanding species (particularly stocks which straddle international borders) and ecosystems as well as
monitoring, evaluating and forecasting change in our oceans.
Historically, as part of the Census of Marine Life program, the main focus for OBIS was on species
presence at a specific geographic location – this focus is now expanding to include additional information
such as abundance. It is important for OBIS to reach out to its community of users and request feedback
as to what other fields are required – example does NAFO require biomass and/or bottom temperature?
Can the SC answer the following question: Does the existing OBIS schema provide the information
required by NAFO participants or is OBIS not being used because it lacks important information?
One of the initial objectives of the Census of Marine Life was to mobilize datasets and make them
accessible to the global community. OBIS Canada is assisting the NAFO Secretariat set up a pilot project
to recover a few identified legacy datasets. Is it possible for the SC to compile a list of known data
collections/reports that could be digitized? Are SC members aware of datasets in their home institutions
that could be released and published to OBIS through their OBIS regional nodes?
OBIS request to the Science Council are simple: Identify legacy datasets, release current data after
embargo period, increase awareness of OBIS both within NAFO and in members organizations and
request feedback.
Figure 1. Global scope of the OBIS system, in terms of species reported and number of records held.
Figure 2. An example of an OBIS search for the distribution of Blue Whiting (Micromesistius poutassou).