Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Voluntary initiatives aimed at promoting collaboration among relevant stakeholders,
including scientists, and access to information and data on the status and trends of the
oceans as well as participation in decision-making by the public at large, include scientific
cooperation programmes, voluntary codes of conduct for scientific activities, and for the
commercial application of discoveries and participatory mechanisms, as described in par-
ticular in
Chapters 6
and
9
of this topic.
Another example of such voluntary endeavours is provided by the Ocean Biogeo-
graphic Information System (
Box 12.1
), which stems from the 10-year programme on a
Census of Marine Life.
Box 12.1
The Ocean Biogeographic Information System (see
www.iobis.org/
)
The Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS) is the world's largest online
system for absorbing, integrating, and accessing data about life in the ocean. It
provides open access to information on the diversity, distribution, and abundance
of marine species, and aims at assisting decision-makers to sustainably manage the
ocean's living resources.
OBIS emanates from the decade-long Census of Marine Life (
www.coml.org
)
,
and is now integrated into the International Oceanographic Data and Information Ex-
change (IODE) Programme of UNESCO's Intergovernmental Oceanographic Com-
mission (IOC).
As of June 2014, OBIS provides 38.8 million geo-referenced species observa-
tions of 115,000 marine species, from the Poles to the Equator, from the surface of the
ocean to the deepest trenches and from bacteria to whales.
However, our knowledge of marine biodiversity still remains very incomplete.
Not only one- to two-thirds of all marine species still remain undiscovered, the ma-
jority of the marine species that are known are only known from a single observa-
tion. The median number of observations of a species in OBIS is 4, and most data are
