European Ocean Biodiversity Information System

The European Ocean Biodiversity Information System (EurOBIS) is a distributed system that allows you to search multiple datasets simultaneously for biogeographic information on marine organisms. The European Ocean Biodiversity Information System "EurOBIS" is an integrated data system developed by the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ) for the EU Network of Excellence "Marine Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning" (MarBEF) in 2004. Its principle aims are to centralise the largely scattered biogeographic data on marine species collected by European institutions and to make these quality controlled data freely available and easily accessible. It is in essence a distributed system in which individual datasets go through a series of quality control procedures before they are integrated into one large consolidated database. EurOBIS is freely available online at www.eurobis.org, where marine biogeographical data - with a focus on taxonomy, temporal and spatial distribution - can be consulted and downloaded for analyses.

EurOBIS acts as the European node of OBIS, the Ocean Biodiversity Information System of the Census of Marine Life (CoML). EurOBIS shares its data with OBIS, which in its turn shares its content with the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF).