Organism occurrences in an ocean observing system

Integrating data about marine organisms and associated observational information into ocean observing systems is an immense challenge. Identification of few kinds of organisms is possible with techniques used to obtain most physical data. Acoustic sensors and methods have been developed for some species that generate sound, and optic sensing techniques may be possible for others, but even those methods typically cannot distinguish among most species. Genetic sequencing shows promise for species-level identification in the future, but significant hurdles remain identifying appropriate markers, building a library of known sequences, and creating widespread capacity. For now and into the foreseeable future, the occurrence of most types of marine organisms will have to be documented from in-situ and non-real-time sources. One source of such data that is poised to interact with other data types from ocean observing systems is the Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS). OBIS is a distributed, Web-based, provider of geo-referenced information on marine organisms world-wide that serves information from museum catalogs, fisheries surveys, the published record, and the like. These data can also provide a historical dimension, thereby contributing to a baseline extending back a century and more; this is highly desirable when environmental change is occurring on a scale of decades. Particularly in an historical context, even point records can be informative. OBIS, and similar systems, must overcome challenges to provide useful products for and from observing systems. Chief among these is interoperability of data management systems and data types.