The Census of Marine Life: A Decade-Long Count of Everything in the Sea

For ten years, scientists tried to count the life in the ocean. The Census of Marine Life was an international project that recorded the diversity, distribution and abundance of marine life. More than 2,700 scientists from 80 nations took part, and their work — built on 540 marine expeditions — was reported at The Royal Society in London in October 2010.

A school of spadefish in Gray's Reef National Marine Sanctuary, off the coast of Georgia. A search of OBIS-USA, a product of the Census, shows over 3,300 records of species found in and near the sanctuary. Credit: NOAA.

What it found

• more than 1,200 new marine species formally described, with thousands more waiting to be
• areas of the ocean where marine species gather, discovered and mapped
• long-term and widespread declines in marine life, alongside evidence of species' resilience and recovery

What it left behind

The Census produced the International Ocean Biogeographic Information System (iOBIS) database. Its U.S. component, OBIS-USA, lets anyone search and download biodiversity data from U.S. marine waters. Altogether the Census contributed 30 million records and 2,600 scientific papers — a baseline for measuring how ocean habitats change in the years ahead because of sea level rise and climate change, extreme weather, hazardous spills and other pressures.

NOAA's part

NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries played a leading role on the U.S. National Committee for the Census. It published reviews on biodiversity and on the OBIS-USA database, contributed a chapter to the book Biota of the Gulf of Mexico, and added sanctuary data to OBIS so the biodiversity of these special areas would be documented. Those long records have let researchers trace the historical ecology of marine ecosystems that have been exploited for their resources. NOAA's Coral Reef Conservation Program, National Marine Fisheries Service, Office of Ocean Exploration and Research and others contributed as well.

Sources

Based on "What is the Census of Marine Life?" from NOAA's National Ocean Service, a work of the United States government in the public domain.