European Ocean Biodiversity Information System

OCEAN-UKRAINE is a three-year (March 2007 - August 2009) interdisciplinary project, that involves the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ) and two major Ukranian marine institutions: the Institute of Biology of the Southern Seas (IBSS) and the Marine Hydrophysical Institute (MHI). The OCEAN-UKRAINE project is supported by the Flemish Government - Department of Foreign Affairs.

The general objective is to strengthen the capacity of these institutes and to integrate them in European networks through a bilateral partnership with Flanders.

Three main topics of work are planned:

• General activities of the National Oceanographic Data Centre (NODC) and strengthening of existing infrastructure, including creation of a national distributed data centre
• Biological data management, including data archeology and rescue
• Oceanographic data management, including the creation of a Virtual Laboratory and operational data management systems

The project will be run in conjunction with the bilateral Flanders-Bulgaria Project SIBEMA (BUL/015/05). Joint activities are hoped to be the embryo of the Ocean Data and Information Network for the Black Sea (ODINBlackSea) that will unite all Black Sea Countries.

Through the Ocean-Ukraine project, a checklist for all species of the Black Sea was provided.