Dataset Card: OBIS — Ocean Biodiversity Information System
Dataset Card: OBIS — Ocean Biodiversity Information System
Status: draft, awaiting maintainer review. Endpoint and license details below were checked against OBIS documentation on 2026-06-11. Confirm the current API base path and per-dataset licenses before relying on them in production.
What it is
OBIS (the Ocean Biodiversity Information System) is a global, open-access platform run under IOC-UNESCO that integrates, quality-controls, and serves marine species occurrence records — over 100 million records of roughly 160,000 marine species, contributed by thousands of datasets worldwide. Taxonomy is reconciled against the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS).
Access
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Provider | OBIS / IOC-UNESCO |
| Docs | OBIS data access, OBIS manual |
| API base | https://api.obis.org (the Mapper and the R package are built on this API; the occurrence endpoint is the primary entry) |
| Auth | None documented for read access |
| Formats | JSON (API); full exports via the OBIS export tooling and the AWS Open Data mirror |
| Bulk mirror | OBIS occurrence data is also on the AWS Registry of Open Data |
License and reuse
OBIS aggregates datasets under mixed licenses — individual datasets may be CC0, CC-BY, or CC-BY-NC. Each OBIS export includes a list of the licenses of the underlying datasets, and users must cite and comply with each dataset's license. Do not assume a single license for OBIS as a whole; carry per-dataset license through to any downstream use.
Fields
OBIS records follow the Darwin Core standard and add 68 fields from the OBIS QC pipeline, including WoRMS-reconciled taxonomy. Core fields a consumer will use: accepted scientific name, decimal latitude/longitude, event date, dataset id, and the dataset's license.
Limitations and ethics
- Occurrence data has spatial and taxonomic sampling bias (effort is uneven across regions and taxa).
- Coordinates can be precise. Coarsen occurrence coordinates of sensitive or exploited species to regional granularity before publishing (Blue Life Commons ETHICS.md); do not surface exact aggregation or nesting locations.
- Records reflect what has been reported, not true absence.
How it's used in the commons
Primary occurrence-signal source for species pages, region briefings, and Ocean Intelligence System bay/species/reef guardians. Connector spec: integrations/obis.md in the Ocean Intelligence System.
Sources (4)
Every claim in this artifact traces to one of the citations below. Anything that could not be sourced was left out.
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