The future of the data system architecture of the Ocean Biogeographic information System (OBIS) was planned on June, 20-21, 2012 by 18 members of the OBIS development consortium.

The outcomes of this technical group meeting will be further discussed at the next IODE steering group for OBIS meeting in November 2012 and a final recommendation will be brought forward to the IODE-XXII general assembly in March 2013. The meeting report provides a summary of the discussions.

Integrating datasets into more comprehsensive pictures of life in our oceans

The Ocean Biogeographic information System (OBIS) seeks to absorb, integrate, and assess isolated datasets into a larger, more comprehsensive pictures of life in our oceans. The system hopes to stimulate research about our oceans to generate new hypotheses concerning evolutionary processes, species distributions, and roles of organisms in marine systems on a global scale. The abstract maps that OBIS generates are maps that contribute to the ‘big picture’ of our oceans: a comprehensive, collaborative, world-wide view of our oceans.



OBIS provides a portal or gateway to many datasets containing information on where and when marine species have been recorded. The datasets are integrated so you can search them all seamlessly by species name, higher taxonomic level, geographic area, depth, and time; and then map and find environmental data related to the locations.