The Census of Marine Life (CoML) project has achieved an extremely successful record over past years in meeting performance milestones. These include milestones in participation (numbers of researchers and nations); financial commitments; partnerships (e.g., with key intergovernmental organizations); observations collected; discoveries, results, and publications; and public awareness and recognition. Much of the credit for this achievement goes to the International Scientific Steering Committee (SSC) and the professional Secretariat based at the Consortium for Oceanographic Research and Education (CORE). Going forward, new goals in the above categories have been established and new milestones will be set related to desired legacies of the CoML program, especially with regard to improved ongoing observation of the oceans and access to data. The leadership team includes SSC Chair Frederick Grassle (Rutgers University), Vice Chairs Victor Gallardo (Chile) and Ian Poiner (Australia), Senior Scientist Ronald O'Dor (Canada), and Admiral West (CORE) in an Executive Committee that convenes by conference call every three weeks. The full SSC meets three times yearly and includes members from China, India, Japan, Malaysia, Netherlands, Denmark, and France, as well as other U.S. members. The chairs of the National and Regional Implementation Committees, which now cover most of the world, meet together annually with the SSC. The leaders of the 14 field projects also convene annually and form another important component of the leadership. This grant renews support for the work of this leadership team of the CoML during the next two years. Project Director: Admiral Richard D. West, President.

A 2005 Foundation grant enabled the Continental Margin Ecosystems on a Worldwide Scale project to form a network of scientists, develop its research plans, and win key commitments. This follow-up grant supports a field project addressing the continental margins sloping from 200 meters at the edge of the continental shelf to 3500 meters deep where the abyssal plains begin. The margins encompass gradual muddy slopes, steep canyons with hard surfaces, and areas of varying temperature, pressure, currents, and oxygen. This margins project will be carried out by a global network of 40 scientists from 32 research institutes. The plan is to work in the next 1-3 years in the Gulf of Mexico, Northeast, Southeast, and Southwest Atlantic, Northeast and Southeast Pacific, and Mediterranean Sea, with gaps in the Northwest Pacific, Indian Ocean, and Australasian Margin to be filled in later. Funding from Brazilian and French oil companies reflect the interest of the offshore oil and gas industries in better characterization of margin habitat. Foundation funds will be used mainly for global coordination, project website and communication, and recovery of historic data. Project Directors: Professor Robert S. Carney, Coastal Ecology Institute, LSU; Myriam Sibuet, French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea (IFREMER), Plouzané, France.

As part of the Census of Marine Life and with a major 2004 Foundation grant, the International Census of Marine Microbes (ICOMM) discovered and identified many times more kinds of bacteria in sea water than had ever been observed before and announced "a rare microbial biosphere" with vast numbers of infrequently occurring organisms. The discovery was based on a sampling at a handful of locations and it was proposed that as many as 5-10 million kinds of marine bacteria might exist. This grant supports expansion of ICOMM's research in order to sample at more than 1600 locations and thereby to create by 2010 the first global picture of marine microbes. ICOMM has used Sloan funds for coordination and planning, database development, partnership building, and integration with other Census of Marine Life projects. Additional major funding from other U.S. foundations and from European sources has been obtained for genetic analysis and laboratory equipment. Because ICOMM needs only liter bottles or small vials of water, it has partnered easily with other Census field projects to obtain samples from all over the oceans. Working groups with members from about 20 countries address open ocean and coastal systems, sea bottom environments, and utilize new technology in microbiology that allows the use of short 60-100 base pairs of DNA to identify many kinds of bacteria. Marine viruses will also be studied in the next phase of ICOMM research. Project Director: Mitchell L. Sogin, Director, Paul Bay Center.

The Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS) has been a key component of the Census of Marine Life. It has allowed the storage and mapping of the tens of millions of observations produced by the field projects of the Census and the integration of these observations with relevant observations made outside the Census program, such as those made as part of other research projects and routine governmental fisheries surveys. Since it was envisioned in 1998, the Foundation has provided $3.2 million for the development of OBIS. It has the potential for becoming the ongoing global depository for all spatially referenced data about marine life, even after the Census is formally completed in 2010. OBIS now includes more than 13 million records on over 78,000 marine species. It operates a reliable user-friendly portal that served over 1 million visitors in 2006. The OBIS International Committee and the portal team at Rutgers have the responsibility of keeping the system operating smoothly while growing it and balancing services to various constituencies, as well as developing a widely accepted plan for financing and governing OBIS for the longer run. OBIS has so far attracted about $10 million in funding from sources other than the Sloan Foundation. This grant supports the work of OBIS for the next two years. Project Director: Professor Frederick Grassle, Director, Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences.

This grant renews support of the work of the Antarctic program of the Census of Marine Life. The scope of this Census of Antarctic Marine Life (CAML) includes the ice-bound oceans surrounding Antarctica and adjacent to them which comprise some 10% of the world's oceans. This cold, very salty, dense water whirls around Antarctica in a circumpolar current and contains a distinct fauna isolated from invasion and also little studied because of its vastness and harsh conditions for research. The nations of the world have agreed that 2007-2009 will form an "International Polar Year" (IPY) during which the high latitude regions will undergo more thorough observation than ever before. Because of the IPY, the Antarctic field project is likely to include more dedicated voyages than other Census efforts. At least 8 cruises have been arranged and as many as a dozen more could materialize. Research in Antarctica is organized through the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR), which coordinates the plans of a Council of Managers of Antarctic National Programs who control vessels, research stations, and other resources. SCAR has become the agent of the Census of Marine Life. It has created an international planning group of leading scientists from seven countries. This group, with expertise from microbes to top predators, has planned the Antarctic Census working in close coordination with funders of Antarctic research. Total commitments could reach $40 million. Foundation funds support the international secretariat for the project (based in Australia), coordination, and integrative activities with other aspects of the Census of Marine Life, including its global database. Project Director: Colin Summerhayes, Executive Director.

Launched with a 2004 Foundation grant as one of the field projects of the Census of Marine Life, the Arctic Census of Marine Life obtained substantial funding from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other sources for the June-July 2005 "Hidden Ocean" expedition on the icebreaker Healy to explore life beneath the ice in some of the deepest parts of the Arctic. The cruise team included Russian, Chinese, and Korean researchers, as well as North Americans and West Europeans. At least 21 new species were discovered. The project's Canadian/German/American trio of faculty from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, has created an effective infrastructure, with a well-run headquarters in Fairbanks and a center in St. Petersburg focused on taxonomic identification. Rich Russian archival data will be available to researchers, as part of a strong Russian contribution to the Arctic field project. An Arctic node of the Ocean Biogeographic Information System, the data assimilation framework for the Census of Marine Life, has been established. The field project expects to benefit from increased worldwide interest and support for intensified sampling in the Arctic and Antarctic during the 2007-2008 International Polar Year. This grant supplies funds to coordinate organization and help with cross-cutting activities such as database management and outreach. Project Director: Professor Rolf R. Gradinger, Institute of Marine Science, School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences.

The Natural Geography of In-Shore Areas (NaGISA) is the nearshore component of the Census of Marine Life. It aims to create a global inventory of marine life in the part of the ocean from the water's edge to ten meters deep. This project involves four phases: laying the technical framework, including agreement on strict sampling protocols; building the global network of research; carrying out the sampling; and synthesis of the data into a global picture. Prior Foundation grants in 2002 and 2004 launched the program and then supported its expansion and some sampling. The project divides the world's shoreline into 70 boxes and aims to have six sites in each box by the year 2010. NaGISA now has 120 active sites and 64 pending. Fifty-one countries are participating and the project is organized into eight regional centers, with headquarters at Kyoto University in Japan in partnership with the University of Alaska. Global, non-Sloan Foundation commitments now total about $16 million, of which Japanese funds amount to $11 million, and funds are expected to increase as more countries participate. The NaGISA network aims to win commitments from many countries to maintain sites for long-term ecological monitoring, to track climate change, and to pursue other research. This new Foundation grant supports the core costs of the project as it enters its peak phase of sampling. Project Director: Professor Katrin Iken, Institute of Marine Science, School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences.

The Census of Marine Zooplankton (CMarZ) field project of the Census of Marine Life studies animals that drift with the ocean currents, ranging from small shrimp-like creatures to jellies many meters long. About 7,000 species of such animals are known and an equal number are believed yet to be discovered. The goal of the project is to produce accurate and complete information on global zooplankton species diversity, biomass, biogeographic distribution, and genetic diversity by 2010. A Foundation grant launched the project in 2004. To achieve global coverage, CMarZ continues to conduct dedicated cruises of its own and also makes use of ships of opportunity, including ferries and other commercial vessels that can carry plankton recorders. Between 2004 and 2006 CMarZ carried out sampling on more than 25 cruises. It has commitments for scores more in coming years. More than 20 scientific papers have already been published and the plankton data are flowing into the Ocean Biogeographic Information System, the data assimilation framework for the Census of Marine Life. CMarZ is well integrated with other parts of the Census, for example, its microbial team, whose even smaller forms of life the plankton eat, and the top predators team, whose turtles and baleen whales eat plankton. Together with the Future of Marine Animal Populations network, CMarZ aims to produce in 2007 the first-ever report on global trends in jellyfish. This grant supplies support for the coordination and implementation of the project for the next three years. Project Director: Professor Ann Bucklin, Head, Department of Marine Sciences.

With Foundation support in 2004, an international team co-led by researchers based in Germany and the United States established the Census of Diversity of Abyssal Marine Life as one of the field projects of the Census of Marine Life. Although the abyssal sea floor covers 54% of the Earth's solid surface, only a few hectares of it have been sampled, and over 90% of all species collected at any single site are new to science. The team has conducted expeditions in the Angola Basin off eastern Africa, along a transect from the Cape of Good Hope to Antarctica, in the Southern Indian Ocean, and in the central Pacific. These expeditions have turned up significant results, for example, carnivorous sponges living 4000 meters deep near Antarctica, more than 250 species of foraminiferans at one small Pacific site, and genetic evidence suggesting multiple colonizations and radiations in the abyss. Seven cruises are planned for 2006-2008 in the South Atlantic, Southern, and Pacific Oceans and the Mediterranean Sea. Over $8 million in commitments for the upcoming period has been obtained, primarily from German and British sources. By 2010 the team aims to learn how many species there are in the abyssal deep sea, if cosmopolitan species are the abyssal norm, whether biodiversity hotspots exist in the abyss, how species richness varies with latitude, and whether the abyss is a cradle of adaptive radiation and novel lineages or mainly a food-poor sink for biota arriving from the more productive continental margins. The abyssal project is well integrated with the other deep-sea field projects of the Census of Marine Life and with its data assimilation framework, the Ocean Biogeographic Information System. The current grant will be used to coordinate and facilitate the expeditions, for administration of joint databases, to improve the reliability of taxonomic descriptions (including by DNA barcoding), and for education and outreach. Project Director: Craig R. Smith, Professor of Oceanography.

Two Census of Marine Life field projects rely on electronic tags. Relatively large tags that continuously collect and archive data are used for top predators such as tuna and sharks in the open ocean. These tags are either collected when an animal is captured or they periodically beam information to a satellite when an animal surfaces. Small tags are used for salmon and other species that travel along the shallow coastal shelves of the continents out to about 200 meters deep. These small tags report the animal's position by passing acoustic curtains of listening devices resting on the sea floor. This shelf tracking project technology has been supported since 2001. With special attention to salmon, the aims are to understand more about where mortality occurs at sea and the extent to which marine species have regular migratory patterns. The Pacific Ocean Shelf Tracking (POST) project, based at the Vancouver Aquarium, has built the world's largest single array using acoustic technology, extending from south of the Columbia River in California through British Columbia to north of the Alaska Panhandle. About 2500 salmon were tracked this past summer. Data from the project have shown that for important salmon populations, mortality at sea matters more than mortality in rivers. The data also include large numbers of rare green sturgeon. White sturgeon have been detected, originally from a California river and found a year later more than 1000 kilometers away in a British Columbia river, thereby highlighting the unsuspected scale and importance of migrations. The POST project aims to extend from Baja California to the Bering Sea and monitor at least 15 species by the year 2010. Two prior Foundation grants totaling $1.418 million have supported the growth of the POST array. An additional $6 million has been raised from Canadian and other U.S. sources. This grant will continue Sloan support primarily for the core management and coordination of the effort, while also stimulating emulation of the POST array around the world. Comparable arrays are under construction in Australia, Europe, and elsewhere. The ultimate goal is a system able to monitor large-scale migrations globally along the continental shelves and also integrated with the open ocean systems. Project Director: George Jackson, Senior Scientist, Pacific Ocean Shelf Tracking project.

To enhance the participation and visibility of the Census of Marine Life in the Jacques Perrin film festival. Project Director: Roland Celette, Cultural Attaché.

To develop the final reporting framework for the 2010 Census of Marine Life. Project Director: Professor Paul Snelgrove, Ocean Sciences Centre.

To strengthen implementation of the Census of Marine Life in the Indian Ocean region. Project Director: P. A. Loka Bharathi, Scientist F, Biological Oceanography Division.

To organize a session on the Census of Marine Life as part of Capitol Hill Oceans Week. Project Director: Lori Arguelles, Executive Director.

To assure the legacy of the Census of Marine Life in ocean observing systems. Project Director: Shubha Sathyendranath, Executive Director.

To strengthen the deep reef component of the Census of Marine Life through cooperation in the Santo Island Biodiversity Survey. Project Director: Guy Reinaud, President.

To reconvene representatives of the major international ocean research and observation projects and programs, including the Census of Marine Life, to discuss common opportunities, issues and problems. Project Director: Edward Urban, Executive Director of SCOR: Associate Research Scholar, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Johns Hopkins University.

To strengthen implementation of the Census of Marine Life in South America. Project Director: Dr. Diego Rodriguez, Departmento de Ciencas Marinas.

To strengthen implementation of the Census of Marine Life in Sub-Sahara Africa. Project Director: Professor Charles Griffiths, Marine Biology Research Institute.