Marine Organisms Data

February 1, 2005

In 1985, Japan Oceanographic Data Center (JODC) established the marine organisms data management system aimed to manage plankton data on computer system under the supervision of the Marine Organisms Data Management Advisory Group. This group consists of Japanese researchers from universities, research institutes and private research companies. Since its establishment, JODC has managed plankton data collected by Japanese research institutes and made the data available to interested scientists.

The marine organisms data management system is composed of two databases: "JODC Taxonomic Code of Marine Organisms" and "Marine Organisms Observation Data".

1. JODC Taxonomic Code of Marine Organisms

Due to the high species diversity in the oceans, taxonomic codes of marine organisms are indispensable to manage and process efficiently the plankton data in digital form. In the JODC Taxonomic Code, all species of marine organism (mainly plankton) are identified by two codes, NAME CODE and CLASSIFICATION. This code system has tried to take into account the synonym names and larvae of various marine species but should not be considered to be totally up to date.

The first edition of "JODC Taxonomic Code" was published in 1988.

JODC revised the taxonomic code and published the results as "JODC Taxonomic Code of Marine Organisms (Plankton) 2001 Edition" with the co-operation of 53 researchers on taxonomy in order to meet the recent demand for knowledge. The importance of marine organism data management is now widely recognised from a rise of the concern about biodiversity and marine environment. The progress of taxonomy and the development of information technology has led us to re-examine the taxonomic code. The 2001 Edition contains up to 8,088 marine organisms (8,242 including subspecies).

[File Format] JODC Taxonomic Code format.

[Access to DB] JODC Taxonomic Code Searching System

2. Marine Organisms (Plankton) Observation Data

This database contains marine observation data, mainly plankton. The marine organisms in the database are defined by the Name Code and Taxonomic Code based on "JODC Taxonomic Code of Marine Organisms (Plankton)," as described above.

Data Source Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of Japan, Japan Meteorology Agency, Ministry of the Environment, Local Governments, etc.
Time Period 1951 - 2006
Area Sea areas around Japan
Data Volume 48,659 stations approximately
[File Format] Marine Organisms Data file format.

[Access to DB] Access to the marine organisms observation database

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