What is OBIS?
OBIS was established by the Census of Marine Life program (http://www.coml.org). It is an evolving federation of organizations and people sharing a vision to make marine biogeographic data, from all over the world, freely available over the World Wide Web. It is not a project or program, and is not limited to data from CoML-related projects. OBIS is not incorporated, it does not employ staff, own equipment, or apply for funding. Organizations involved in OBIS take on these responsibilities.
OBIS provides, on an ‘open access’ basis through the World Wide Web:
• taxonomically and geographically resolved data on marine life and the ocean environment;
• interactivity with similar databases;
• access to interactive physical oceanographic data at regional and global scales;
• software tools for biogeographic analysis.