Ocean & coastal analytics · Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC-UNESCO) / International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange (IODE)
Ocean Biodiversity Information System
Free global database of marine species observations, aggregated from a worldwide network of contributing institutions.
OBIS is a global, open-access database of marine biodiversity observations, governed by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO through its International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange programme. It aggregates species occurrence records, DNA sequences and environmental measurements contributed by a distributed network of roughly 38 national and thematic nodes across around 99 countries, supported by thousands of participating scientists and data managers. Users can query the database by species, location, dataset or publisher through an interactive mapping tool or a RESTful API, making it a standard reference for marine species distribution, conservation planning and ecosystem research. As an intergovernmental scientific infrastructure, access to all data is free.
At a glance
| Vendor | Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC-UNESCO) / International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange (IODE) |
|---|---|
| Pricing model | Free |
| Free tier | Yes |
| Deployment | Cloud |
| Open source | No |
| Best for | Marine ecologists and conservation planners needing free, global species occurrence data. |
Pricing
Free, open-access database governed by IOC-UNESCO/IODE and maintained by an international network of data nodes.
Pricing has not been verified yet — see the vendor's site.
Features
- Global database of marine species occurrence records
- Contributions from ~38 nodes across ~99 countries
- Interactive mapping tool (OBIS Mapper) for spatial queries
- RESTful API for programmatic data access
- DNA sequence and environmental measurement data alongside occurrences
- Searchable by species, dataset, location or publisher
Integrations
Profile last reviewed September 21, 2026