Jacque Cousteau's Dream Is Now Reality

Only in the wildest dreams and imagination of Jacque Cousteau, steward of the world’s oceans could today’s reality be true. Earth’s first world census of marine life, past, present and future is available for all people to peruse and learn about the other 2/3’s of the planet we call home.
The project started in 2000 by a consortium of scientific academia, industry, government, and societies, such as, National Geographic Society and The Cousteau Society. All the massive team effort is finished and culminated in a free website that just went live.
I’m sure Jacque would say “superb”and “magnifique” of the achievement, but remember how he always employed the “sting” of why did it take so long…humanity?
Census of Marine Life

S+F!
This is great and I would have missed otherwise. Thanks for sharing!

i cant wait untill they finally catalog the mastadon shark as living again. think they should explore those damn trenches, you are either going to find a mastadon shark, giant squid or sea dragon

Originally posted by desperation
i cant wait untill they finally catalog the mastadon shark as living again. think they should explore those damn trenches, you are either going to find a mastadon shark, giant squid or sea dragon

The team took the incredible challenge of "past, present and future" so everything is on the table!
Their Scientific Framework:
Scientific Framework
1. What has lived in the oceans?
2. What does live in the oceans?
3. What will live in the oceans?


The Census consists of four major component programs organized around these questions.

Investigating the Past
Census researchers undertook the challenge of constructing the history of marine animal populations since human predation became important, roughly the last 500 years. This program component is called History of Marine Animal Populations (HMAP).

Teams of fisheries scientists, historians, economists and others have initiated case studies in southern Africa, Australia, and approximately a dozen other regions. Together, these case studies are creating the first reliable picture of life in the oceans before fishing. This depiction of a more pristine ocean could be important in setting goals for marine protection. The long historical records of marine populations will help distinguish the contributions of natural fluctuations in the environment from the effects of human activities.

Assessing the Present
The largest component of the Census involves investigating what now lives in the world's oceans through 14 field projects. Each is sampling important kinds of biota in one of six realms of the global oceans using a range of technologies. Details of these interesting and varied field projects are provided below.

Forecasting the Future
To speak about what will live in the oceans involves numerical modeling and simulation. This component program is organized under the rubric of the Future of Marine Animal Populations (FMAP). This group focuses on integrating data from many different sources and creating new statistical and analytical tools to make predictions for marine populations and ecosystems in the future.

Together, the historical, present, and predictive programs of the Census aim to improve and state as accurately as possible what is known about life in the oceans, to identify what is unknown but knowable, and also to state what may be unknowable.

Providing a Living Legacy
Such a global initiative requires a state-of-the-art data assimilation framework, and this effort, the Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS), forms the fourth component program of the Census. The vision is that users will be able to click on maps of the oceans on their laptop or desktop anywhere in the world and bring up Census data on what is reported to live in the ocean zone of interest. In 2007, OBIS already contains more than 14 million records, with millions more expected by 2010. OBIS is designed to make sharing data easy, opening the door to improved understanding of the patterns and processes that govern marine life.