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Indian Ocean Census of Marine Life

The Census of Marine Life (CoML), along with the Perth Regional office of Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, convened a meeting of about 40 scientists from the countries bordering the Indian Ocean at Goa in December 2003 to assess the state of our knowledge of the Coastal and Marine Biodiversity in the Indian Ocean region. The general consensus after the meeting was that the regional initiatives on coastal and marine biodiversity could be best served by being associated with CoML. The Indian Ocean node of CoML (IO-CoML) was thus conceived and was established formally in June 2004 with the election of a steering committee to implement CoML activities in the region. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, India had agreed to host a secretariat of IO-CoML at the National Institute Of Oceanography, Goa.

The primary tasks of IO-CoML are strengthening of the Database on Coastal and Marine Biodiversity of the Indian Ocean region, catalyze implementation of the field projects of CoML, enable capacity building and create opportunities for multi-institutional research on Coastal and Marine biodiversity.

What's New		Activities
National workshop on Barcoding of Marine Life at Goa		Mapping & Visualization Workshop at Duke University, Durham, NC, USA, 23 - 25 October 2008
India heralds celebrations of International Year of the Coral reef 2008 (IYOR 08)		International workshop of the CoML’s new project Continental Margin Ecosystem (COMARGE) at Institut Oceanographique, Paris, 6-7 July 2006
International training on DNA barcoding of marine life		3rd SCOR Panel meeting on New technologies for Observing Marine Life at Kobe , Japan 18 - 20 October 2006
Establishment of the first NaGISA site in India		Scientific steering committee meeting of CeDAMAR, at Hereklion, Greece, 19-21 October, 2006
		CMarZ Steering Group meeting at Ocean Research Institute, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan 6-8 November, 2006