Census of Marine Life

The function of the Census of Marine Life (CoML) is to assess and explain the diversity, distribution and abundance of marine organisms in the world's oceans. Now is the time for such concerted effort because of the convergence of powerful new technologies to sample marine life, combined with society's interest in exploring the great remaining unknown areas of the Earth and the very practical need to use its resources more wisely. The CoML addresses the United Nations Framework Convention on Biodiversity directives, which requires signatories to collect information on living resources. The United States Ocean Exploration Initiative calls for a new age of ocean exploration. The CoML will meet this goal by gathering vast amounts of species-level distribution information in areas never explored by man.