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Established by the Census of Marine Life programme in 2001, OBIS-SEAMAP is a consortium of organizations and individuals who share a vision to make marine biogeographical data freely available over the World Wide Web.
OBIS-SEAMAP (Ocean Biogeographic Information System Spatial Ecological Analysis of Megavertebrate Populations) is an interactive, online digital database of marine mammal, seabird and sea turtle data. The global database includes observations made from line-transect surveys, photo-identification work, shore-based counts, strandings and satellite telemetry.
OBIS-SEAMAP currently hosts over 2.25 million records from 237 datasets on the global distribution of marine mammals, sea turtles and seabirds, including large datasets such as the European Seabirds at Sea database (ESAS).
A search of the OBIS-SEAMAP data base reveals it currently contains a total of 7939 at-sea records of 11 ACAP-listed taxa (not all the recent taxonomic splits are recognized), ranging from just one record for Buller’s Albatross Thalassarche bulleri to 2360 for wandering albatrosses Diomedea exaulans (sensu lato) and 2622 for the White-chinned Petrel Procellaria aequinoctialis. The bulk of these records comes from the international BIOMASS (Biological Investigations of Marine Antarctic Systems and Stocks) at-sea surveys conducted in the first half of the 1980s, data held by the Antarctic Environmental Data Centre of the British Antarctic Survey.
Support from the U.S. National Science Foundation and the National Oceanographic Partnership Program is fostering the continued growth and refinement of OBIS-SEAMAP. The OBIS-SEAMAP team has made a call for new data to be submitted. For more information, please visit http://seamap.env.duke.edu/about/provider_faq.
John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 15 January 2009