In 1997 acknowledging the need for better ocean observations and ocean forecasts and with the scientific and technical opportunity that readily available satellite data had delivered, the Global Ocean Data Assimilation Experiment (GODAE) was initiated to lead the way in establishing global operational oceanography.
The GLOBEC programme officially ran from 1999-2009. The aim was to advance our understanding of the structure and functioning of the global ocean ecosystem, its major subsystems, and its response to physical forcing so that a capability can be developed to forecast the responses of the marine ecosystem to global change.
These numbers only begin to describe the scope of the Census of Marine Life, a 10-year international effort undertaken in to assess the diversity (how many different kinds), distribution (where they live), and abundance (how many) of marine life—a task never before attempted on this scale......
The Ecosystem Studies of Sub-Arctic Seas (ESSAS) Program is a regional program of the Integration of Marine Biogeochemistry and Ecosystem Research (IMBER) project. Its objectives are to understand how climate change will affect the marine ecosystems of the Sub-Arctic Seas and their sustainability.