The Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS) the data integration component of the Census of Marine Life is an evolving strategic alliance of people and organizations sharing a vision to make marine biogeographic data, from all over the world, freely available over the World Wide Web. It documents the diversity and distribution of marine life through a network of linked databases. Integrating data from a vast number of sources, it is ideally placed to inform decision makers on global environmental issues that threaten the health of the world oceans and thus the safety of humankind.

OBIS 'Mission'

• OBIS publishes primary data on marine species locations online through www.iobis.org
  - It facilitates data discovery and exploration by
  
  • Searching by species, higher taxa, time, location, depth, database
  • Mapping, overlaying species distributions on ocean environment, modelling of potential environmental range
• Integrates data
  - Over different marine themes
  
  • Microbes to whales
  • Genetics and morphology
  • Poles to equator…
  - Over many data providers
• Enables data capture for re-use
  - Publishes data on its web site, with clear acknowledgement of initial data provider
  and suggested citation of the dataset
  - Actively engages with the scientific community in data archaeology and rescue
• Supports CoML 2010 synthesis

History of OBIS

OBIS was established by the Census of Marine Life program . The initial idea developed from a CoML- sponsored Benthic Census Meeting held in October 1997. Recommendations from this meeting led to the establishment of a prototype OBIS web site by J.F Grassle, K. Stocks and Y. Zhang at Rutgers in 1998 to demonstrate the initial OBIS concept.
Click here to learn more about history of OBIS >>

Long term goals

OBIS aims to be the primary authoritative source of data on the distribution of all marine species of the world, and to provide this data with online quality control, mapping, and analysis tools, including correlating distributions to environmental datasets, in the advancement of marine science, management, and education. Specifically, by 2010 OBIS will become:

• a world-wide information facility serving and archiving data from global marine biodiversity and global ocean observing system studies.
• an international standards body for data modeling, service discovery, and information exchange in the realm of ocean biogeography and marine biodiversity.
• a global forum for integrated ocean biogeography and biodiversity studies.

Data and Products

OBIS publishes data on behalf of scientists from government agencies, museums, universities, commercial companies, and non-governmental organizations. OBIS is always seeking new contributors. Please contact us in case you want to publish your data through the OBIS portal. Check the OBIS web site to learn more on how to use OBIS data.

Map of ES(50) – Red indicates high species richness, blue low. White areas are where there are less than 50 distribution records in a square.	Shannon diversity index. Red indicates high diversity, blue low and white no records.
Number of observations. Red indicates high, blue low and white no observations.	Number of species. Red color indicates high, blue low and white no records to show.

OBIS is a project of the