Ocean Biogeographic Information System
Ocean Biogeographic Information System, or OBIS for short, is an international, web-based database system that collects data about marine life and makes it available to everyone on the Internet. The database was created as part of the Census of Marine Life project (duration 2000–2010) and was the fourth component there. In June 2009 the database was adopted by the member states of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC- UNESCO ) in the IODE program. 500 institutions from 56 countries are involved.
The OBIS Secretariat was initially located at Rutgers University in New Brunswick . The Vlaams Instituut voor de Zee , Ostend, was responsible for the European seas and later took over the overall supervision.
OBIS also aims to:
- Present taxonomic and geographic data on marine life and the marine environment;
- Establish cross-connections to other databases ;
- Develop and provide software tools for the collection and analysis of data.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.iobis.org/about/governance
- ↑ Statistics and chronology on the OBIS website , accessed on January 3, 2017