State of the Ocean Report 2024 launched by IOC-UNESCO

The State of the Ocean Report 2024, just launched by IOC-UNESCO, takes a careful look at, among other things, the conservation status of marine biodiversity in light of the achievements of the UN Ocean Decade for Sustainable Development.

In the chapter devoted to “Biodiversity knowledge and threats on marine life”, we read that "72% of [marine] species facing the threat of extinction find refuge within Marine Protected Areas (MPAs)" - a significant result which could not be derived without the immense effort of sharing open-access biodiversity data via IOC-UNESCO's Ocean Biodiversity Information System (OBIS). As noted in the chapter on “Open access to ocean data from global to local scales,” there are on average 50,000 observations being added to OBIS daily, adding to the already impressive 120 million observations covering 75% of currently known marine species - an achievement made possible by over 1,000 contributing institutions from 99 countries. 

In the BioEcoOcean project, we strongly promote sharing more open-access data to OBIS and other biological databases which would increase the spatial and temporal resolution of indicators of progress in conservation. Through BioEcoOcean's living labs, we conduct exciting work which includes new field surveys and biodiversity analysis across MPAs in the Baltic Sea, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. Moreover, we will support marine spatial planning with the aim to increase MPAs on the coast of Portugal.

Follow our website and social media to learn about the progress we achieve over the next months and years.

Please download the State of the Ocean Report 2024