Census of Marine Life
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Census of Marine Life (CoML) is an ambitious, 10-year program with the aim of answering three basic questions, "what lives in the oceans" (current and near-current data); "what did live in the oceans" (historical data); and "what will live in the oceans" (predictive / modelled data). As reported in this article in Science magazine, its genesis was a conversation between Dr. J. Frederick Grassle, a marine biologist from Rutgers University, and Jesse Ausubel, program director for the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, that led to the Sloan Foundation and other funding agencies agreeing to support a series of CoML field projects (currently numbering 14); HMAP, a project to study historical abundance data for marine species; FMAP, a project to produce predictive forecasts of future marine species abundance and distribution; and OBIS, the Ocean Biogeographic Information System.
According to the official CoML web site, researchers in more than 70 countries are currently involved in CoML-related projects engaged in the collection and analysis of new data concerning the distribution and abundance of marine life in previously unexplored or underexplored areas, and the number is continuing to increase. The anticipated "completion date" for the Census is with the production of a report in 2010; OBIS, the Ocean Biogeographic Information System, is designed to remain online after that date, to provide a continuing means to access the legacy of CoML data that will have been acquired during the lifetime of the program.
