A Census of Fishes and Everything They Eat: How the Census of Marine Life Advanced Fisheries Science

Abstract

The Census of Marine Life was a 10‐year, international research effort to explore poorly known ocean habitats and conduct large‐scale experimentation with new technology. The goal of Census 2010 in its mission statement was to describe what did live in the oceans, what does live in the oceans, and what will live in the ocean. Many of the findings and techniques from census research may prove valuable in making a transition, which many governments have publicly endorsed, from single‐species fisheries management to more holistic ecosystem management. Census researchers sampled continental margins, mid‐Atlantic ridges, ocean floor vents and seeps, and abyssal plains and polar seas and organized massive amounts of past and new information in a public online database called the Ocean Biogeographic Information System (www.iobis.org). The census described and categorized seamount biology worldwide for its vulnerability to fishing, advanced large‐scale animal tracking with acoustic arrays and satellite archival tags, and accelerated species identification, including nearshore, coral reef, and zooplankton sampling using genetic barcoding and pyrotag sequencing for microbes and helped to launch the exciting new field of marine environmental history. Above all, the census showed the value of investing in large‐scale, collaborative projects and sharing results publicly.

Methods for the Study of Marine Biodiversity

“…For example, programmes such as the ICES North Sea Benthos Survey (e.g., Duineveld et al 1991;Basford et al 1993) and NaGISA Cruz-Motta et al 2010;Konar et al 2010;Pohle et al 2011;Miloslavich et al 2013) could be continued and expanded internationally. NaGISA was one of several projects within the decade-long Census of Marine Life, the largest global collaboration in marine biology covering coastal to deep-sea, and polar to tropical environments, and which established OBIS (O'Dor et al 2012). Thus opportunities exist to design globally standardised programmes for these ecological guilds that would be comparable with historic data.…”

“…In 2009, IOC Member States recognised the importance of knowledge of the ocean's biodiversity to national and global environmental policies when they adopted it from the Census of Marine Life (Costello and Vanden Berghe 2006;Costello et al 2007;O'Dor et al 2012). OBIS operates through a network of national, regional and thematic nodes, and a secretariat based at the IOC's International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange (IODE) programme office in Oostende, Belgium.…”

Geospatial approaches to support pelagic conservation planning and adaptive management

“…With the synthesis of the Tagging of Pacific Predators (TOPP) project, a subproject of CoML, one of the largest multi-species tracking datasets was synthesized to show patterns and hotspots in the Northeast Pacific Ocean (Block et al 2011). The Census of Fishes, also part of CoML, collated existing global knowledge of fishes across habitats, life stages and methodologies for understanding fish ecology and distribution (O'Dor et al 2012). Furthermore, the OBIS was developed as part of CoML and has become the primary repository for marine species datasets from around the world (Grassle et al 2000).…”

Sustainable Biodiversity Databasing: International, Collaborative, Dynamic, Centralised

“…This security encouraged more experts to become editors and provided the computer platform for WoRMS [14]. The involvement of a core group of taxonomists in the Census of Marine Life and its Ocean Biogeographic Information System provided the social network to expand ERMS to WoRMS [15]. WoRMS is now governed by a committee elected by its editors which has a formal agreement with the database host institute [7].…”