Abstract
The International Year of Biodiversity 2010 has seen the culmination of the Census of Marine Life (CoML), a decade- long research initiative devoted to assessing the diversity, distribution, and abundance of marine life in the world’s seas. Some 2,700 scientists from across the globe have been involved in CoML, the most comprehensive inventory of global marine life to ever be compiled. Now totalling over 28 million records, CoML has established a baseline that can be used to forecast, measure, and understand changes in the global marine environment, as well as to inform the management and conservation of marine resources...