Quotable quotes:

Jesse Ausubel of the USA, Census Co-founder and Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Program Director: "The Census encountered an ocean growing more crowded with commerce and transparent through technology. Setting out to draw baselines of the diversity, distribution, and abundance of species, the first Census of Marine Life documented a changing ocean, richer in diversity, more connected through distribution and movements, more impacted by humans, and yet less explored than we had known."

Fred Grassle of the USA, Census Co-Founder: "The Census has helped pour the foundation for the 'e-Biosphere,' a massive, comprehensive virtual observatory of world biodiversity now under construction. OBIS and related rich initiatives like the Encyclopedia of Life, Barcode of Life initiative, and Google Earth pool environmental observations, specimen data, and experimental results into a global commons to enhance dramatically our ability to understand Earth's life."

Myriam Sibuet of France, Vice-Chair of the Scientific Steering Committee: "The Census enlarged the known world. Life astonished us everywhere we looked. In the deep sea we found luxuriant communities despite extreme conditions. The discoveries of new species and habitats b
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