Taxonomic Information System for the Belgian coastal area. Biogeographical information on (mainly) Belgian species. Focus area of the dataset spans from north of Wimereux (northern France) to the Scheldt estuary (southern Netherlands).

During the expeditions of the e-learning projects Expeditie Zeeleeuw and Planet Ocean, high school students come on board the research vessel and are introduced to the marine life of the Belgian part of the North Sea (BCP). Four days long, the water column and bottom of the BCP are sampled, respectively with beam trawl or otter trawl and a Van Veen grab. All samples are processed on board.

In the framework of the Lifewatch marine observatory a number of fixed stations in the Belgian Part of the North Sea (BPNS) are visited on a monthly or seasonal basis using RV Simon Stevin. A grid of nine stations covers the coastal zone and are sampled monthly. Eight additional stations, located further at sea, are sampled on a seasonal basis. Samples are taken using a 55µm mesh size Apstein net. In the lab, the samples are processed with the VS-4 FlowCAM at 4X magnification. The identification of the image data is done with the use of a classifier and followed by a manual validation step. Since May 2017, this dataset provides micro- and phytoplankton observations, mainly covering diatoms, dinoflagellates and cilliates, for the Belgian Part of the North Sea (BPNS).

In the framework of the Lifewatch marine observatory nine fixed stations on the Belgian Part of the North Sea (BPNS) are visited on a monthly basis, and 17 fixed stations on a seasonal basis, using the RV Simon Stevin. This dataset holds records of unique observations in the Belgian Part of the North Sea, which are not collected on a continous base ('loose observations') and do not fit into any of the other described LifeWatch Datasets.

As part of the Belgian LifeWatch observatory, a permanent Cetacean passive acoustic network is established in the Belgian Part of the North Sea. The sensor network uses C-PODs (Chelonia Limited) to register the presence of harbour porpoise (<i>Phocoena phocoena</i>) in the neighbourhood. Click trains of harbour porpoises are detected and classified using the CPOD software and high and moderate quality click trains are selected. <p>The dataset is published yearly in the highest time resolution, per minute.</p>

In the framework of the Lifewatch marine observatory a number of fixed stations on the Belgian Part of the North Sea (BPNS) are visited on a monthly or seasonal basis using the RV Simon Stevin. A grid of nine stations covers the coastal zone and are sampled monthly. Eight additional stations, located further at sea, are sampled on a seasonal basis. This dataset contains zooplankton observations in the Belgian Part of the North Sea (BPNS) since 2012. Zooplankton is sampled by vertical WP2 net tows, samples scanned with ZooScanner and identification with plankton analyser software, followed by manual validation.

These data are published in papers held within the MarBEF Publication Series. The MarBEF Data Management team has been screening these papers and provides the distribution data via EurOBIS.

SeaWatch-B dataset (in Dutch) for the period of June 2014 to June 2018.

Belgium and Kenya have a long tradition of collaboration in marine sciences. In 2012 the Kenya Marine and Fisheries Institute (KMFRI) and the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ) renewed this collaboration with a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). A first step already started under the umbrella of LifeWatch with the recovery of biotic datasets resulting from joint Belgian-Kenyan marine research activities. This data collection combines all biotic data recovered from theses and reports resulting in the Eastern African region conducted between 1873 and 1999.

The European Ocean Biodiversity Information System (EurOBIS) is a distributed system that allows you to search multiple datasets simultaneously for biogeographic information on marine organisms.