OBIS allows users to search marine species datasets from all of the world's oceans. More than 30 OBIS nodes around the world connect +1000 institutions from 70 countries. Collectively, they have provided over 100 million observations of 180,000 marine species (and about 200 million other measurements and sampling facts), from Bacteria to Whales, from the surface to 10 900 meters depth, and from the Tropics to the Poles. The datasets are integrated so you can search and map them all seamlessly by species name, higher taxonomic level, geographic area, depth, time and environmental parameters. OBIS emanates from the Census of Marine Life (2000-2010) and was adopted as a project under IOC-UNESCO’s International Oceanographic Data and Information (IODE) programme in 2009.

Monitoring program(s) or initiative(s) using the tool:

CBD EBSA process, UN World Ocean Assessment, IPBES assessments, GEF Assessments, about 200 papers per year cite OBIS