The Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS) is a cluster of international organisations and researchers sharing a vision to make marine biogeographic data from around the world freely available over the Internet.
OBIS is a web-based provider of global geo-referenced information on marine species. It provides an entry point to query databases on species and habitats and provides a variety of tools for visualising data about marine species and their environment. OBIS is the information component/data repository of the Census of Marine Life Program and is also the marine node for the Global Biodiversity Information facility (GBIF).
Southwestern Pacific OBIS node
The goals of this Southwestern Pacific Regional OBIS node are to:
- Provide web access to marine species distribution data from the Southwestern Pacific region.
- Encourage the sharing of marine species data from the Southwestern Pacific region for inclusion in the OBIS international data network.
- Enable users to locate marine data from the international OBIS network.
The Southwestern Pacific OBIS Node site is a gateway to marine biodiversity data from the Ross Sea (Antarctica), the Southern Ocean south of New Zealand, the New Zealand Exclusive Economic Zone, and surrounding seas, including those to the north as far as Fiji. As they become available, more new data sets will be added to this site and to the main OBIS site.
The Southwestern Pacific Regional OBIS Node is hosted by New Zealand’s National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research (NIWA) and is also supported in its start-up phase by funding from the US Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, administered via the international OBIS Secretariat, at Rutgers University in the USA.