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Census of Marine Life
The Census of Marine Life was a scientific initiative involving a global network of researchers in more than 80 nations, engaged to assess and explain the diversity, distribution, and abundance of life in the oceans. The census cost US$650 million and took ten years to produce; the first comprehensive Census of Marine Life was released in 2010 in London. Initially supported by funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the project was successful in generating many times that initial investment in additional support and substantially increased the baselines of knowledge in often underexplored ocean realms, as well as engaging over 2,700 different researchers for the first time in a global collaborative community united in a common goal, and has been described as "one of the largest scientific collaborations ever conducted".
According to Jesse Ausubel, Senior Research Associate of the Program for the Human Environment of Rockefeller University and science advisor to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the idea for a "Census of Marine Life" originated in conversations between himself and Dr. J. Frederick Grassle, an oceanographer and benthic ecology professor at Rutgers University, in 1996. Grassle had been urged to talk with Ausubel by former colleagues at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and was at that time unaware that Ausubel was also a program manager at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, funders of a number of other large scale "public good" science-based projects such as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Ausubel was instrumental in persuading the Foundation to fund a series of "feasibility workshops" over the period 1997-1998 into how the project might be conducted, one result of these workshops being the broadening of the initial concept from a "Census of the Fishes" into a comprehensive "Census of Marine Life". Results from these workshops, plus associated invited contributions, formed the basis of a special issue of Oceanography magazine in 1999; later that year, a workshop in Washington, D.C. addressed the formation of an Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS) which would serve to collate existing knowledge about the distribution of organisms in the ocean and form the information management component of the Census.
The Census began in a formal sense with the announcement in May 2000 of eight grants totaling about 4 million US$ to create OBIS, as reported in Science magazine, 2 June. Meanwhile, an International Scientific Steering Committee was formed in 1999, which by 2001 envisaged "about half a dozen pilot [field] programs" for the period 2002-2004 which, along with OBIS and another project called "History of Marine Animal Populations" (HMAP), would provide the initial activities of the Census, to be followed by an additional series of field programs in 2005–2007, culminating in an analysis and integration phase in 2008–2010. During the operation of the Census, an additional non-field project was added, the Future of Marine Animal Populations (FMAP), which concentrated on forecasting the future of life in the oceans using modeling and simulation tools.
As a general method of working, project proposals would be debated within the Scientific Steering Committee and, if recommended for funding, a formal submission would be made to the Sloan Foundation for funding to support the Principal Investigators (PIs) and a Project Coordinator, meetings of project participants, and additional Synthesis and Education and Outreach activities. Since Sloan Foundation approval was dependent on promises of contributions from additional sources, and projects were encouraged to bring additional resources on board during their operation, the Foundation funds committed were effectively leveraged many times to provide a much more substantial program than would otherwise have been possible. As core infrastructure components, the Foundation also supported the Census' International Scientific Steering Committee and Secretariat, the U.S. National Committee, and an Education and Outreach Network to lift the project's visibility and engage other nations and organizations. The Census was ultimately estimated to have cost US$650 million, of which the Sloan Foundation contributed US$75 million with the remainder supplied by a large number of participating institutions, countries, and national and international organizations in the form of both direct and in-kind contributions.
In a retrospective review in 2011, David Penman and co-authors wrote:
The Census had its inception in a visionary leader (Grassle) who was able to convince a small group of colleagues of the need for such a project and find a like-minded individual (Ausubel) who saw the opportunity for the Sloan Foundation to take a key role in bring the Census to fruition. This was not leadership that sought out problems to solve – it identified an issue that could not be addressed through conventional national funding mechanisms and could only be approached through a large-scale collaborative endeavour. The Sloan Foundation saw the opportunity to facilitate new science that would also contribute knowledge for wide societal benefit.
The Census consisted of three major component themes organized around the questions:
The largest component of the Census involved investigating what currently lives in the world's oceans through 14 field projects. Each sampled the biota in one of six realms of the global oceans using a range of technologies. These projects were as follows:
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Census of Marine Life
The Census of Marine Life was a scientific initiative involving a global network of researchers in more than 80 nations, engaged to assess and explain the diversity, distribution, and abundance of life in the oceans. The census cost US$650 million and took ten years to produce; the first comprehensive Census of Marine Life was released in 2010 in London. Initially supported by funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the project was successful in generating many times that initial investment in additional support and substantially increased the baselines of knowledge in often underexplored ocean realms, as well as engaging over 2,700 different researchers for the first time in a global collaborative community united in a common goal, and has been described as "one of the largest scientific collaborations ever conducted".
According to Jesse Ausubel, Senior Research Associate of the Program for the Human Environment of Rockefeller University and science advisor to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the idea for a "Census of Marine Life" originated in conversations between himself and Dr. J. Frederick Grassle, an oceanographer and benthic ecology professor at Rutgers University, in 1996. Grassle had been urged to talk with Ausubel by former colleagues at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and was at that time unaware that Ausubel was also a program manager at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, funders of a number of other large scale "public good" science-based projects such as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Ausubel was instrumental in persuading the Foundation to fund a series of "feasibility workshops" over the period 1997-1998 into how the project might be conducted, one result of these workshops being the broadening of the initial concept from a "Census of the Fishes" into a comprehensive "Census of Marine Life". Results from these workshops, plus associated invited contributions, formed the basis of a special issue of Oceanography magazine in 1999; later that year, a workshop in Washington, D.C. addressed the formation of an Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS) which would serve to collate existing knowledge about the distribution of organisms in the ocean and form the information management component of the Census.
The Census began in a formal sense with the announcement in May 2000 of eight grants totaling about 4 million US$ to create OBIS, as reported in Science magazine, 2 June. Meanwhile, an International Scientific Steering Committee was formed in 1999, which by 2001 envisaged "about half a dozen pilot [field] programs" for the period 2002-2004 which, along with OBIS and another project called "History of Marine Animal Populations" (HMAP), would provide the initial activities of the Census, to be followed by an additional series of field programs in 2005–2007, culminating in an analysis and integration phase in 2008–2010. During the operation of the Census, an additional non-field project was added, the Future of Marine Animal Populations (FMAP), which concentrated on forecasting the future of life in the oceans using modeling and simulation tools.
As a general method of working, project proposals would be debated within the Scientific Steering Committee and, if recommended for funding, a formal submission would be made to the Sloan Foundation for funding to support the Principal Investigators (PIs) and a Project Coordinator, meetings of project participants, and additional Synthesis and Education and Outreach activities. Since Sloan Foundation approval was dependent on promises of contributions from additional sources, and projects were encouraged to bring additional resources on board during their operation, the Foundation funds committed were effectively leveraged many times to provide a much more substantial program than would otherwise have been possible. As core infrastructure components, the Foundation also supported the Census' International Scientific Steering Committee and Secretariat, the U.S. National Committee, and an Education and Outreach Network to lift the project's visibility and engage other nations and organizations. The Census was ultimately estimated to have cost US$650 million, of which the Sloan Foundation contributed US$75 million with the remainder supplied by a large number of participating institutions, countries, and national and international organizations in the form of both direct and in-kind contributions.
In a retrospective review in 2011, David Penman and co-authors wrote:
The Census had its inception in a visionary leader (Grassle) who was able to convince a small group of colleagues of the need for such a project and find a like-minded individual (Ausubel) who saw the opportunity for the Sloan Foundation to take a key role in bring the Census to fruition. This was not leadership that sought out problems to solve – it identified an issue that could not be addressed through conventional national funding mechanisms and could only be approached through a large-scale collaborative endeavour. The Sloan Foundation saw the opportunity to facilitate new science that would also contribute knowledge for wide societal benefit.
The Census consisted of three major component themes organized around the questions:
The largest component of the Census involved investigating what currently lives in the world's oceans through 14 field projects. Each sampled the biota in one of six realms of the global oceans using a range of technologies. These projects were as follows: