EMODnet Biology Phase III has officially started on the 19th April 2017. The Kick-off meeting took place in Oostende on the 25 and 26 of April. Phase III is composed of 22 partners plus 2 sub-contractors covering all Europeans Seas. At least 4 million new records are expected to be added for this third phase. Different ecological modelling techniques will be used to provide data products showing trends of European marine life. EMODnet Biology is coordinated by the Flanders Marine Institute and will further build on EurOBIS, WoRMS, and Marine Regions.

Representation of the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) at the Catalogue of Life Global Team Meeting.

From 3 till 7 April 2017, the EurOBIS Data Management Team provided a double training workshop in Poland. During both workshops, the participants were submerged into EurOBIS & OBIS, and other related initiatives such as EMODnet Biology and LifeWatch, and how all these initiatives relate to GBIF. Next to a general introduction, the participants were trained in how to process their own datasets to submit them to EurOBIS, from where they will flow to OBIS.

Participation by the LifeWatch INBO team. More information on the link below.

On Thursday, 26th of January 2017, the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ) and IMEC (UGent) met for the first time during the LifeWatch Observatory Sensors Meeting, to explore opportunities for collaboration on sensor data analysis. Before the LifeWatch Marine Observatory becomes fully operational in 2017-2018, several sensors are being purchased, calibrated and tested. There is still room for improvement when it comes to the analysis software and machine learning algorithms of these sensors, and this is where IMEC might step in.

On 3 March 2017, several demo sessions at the VLIZ Marine Science Day in Bruges (Belgium) highlighted different aspects of the Flemish LifeWatch infrastructure, and its related components:

• The LifeWatch infrastructure [Dekeyzer Stefanie, Deneudt Klaas, Vandepitte Leen, Goffin Annelies, Claus Simon and Hernandez Francisco]

On 23 - 24 February 2017, the bird tracking network was presented at the ENRAM international conference on radar aeroecology in Rome, Italy.

During the European Telemetry Network (ETN) / Ocean Tracking Network Database (OTN) Workshop (February 14th-17th 2017, Halifax, Canada), the technical teams from ETN and OTN compared their database infrastructure, evaluated and planned for collaborative efforts to carry forward, and discovered new methods, both policy and programming, to strengthen the collaborative efforts of OTN and the ETN. During this workshop, the LifeWatch VLIZ team demonstrated the European Telemetry Network Database (database in development at the time of the workshop).

The EMODnet Stakeholder Conference and Sea-basin Workshops on 14 – 15 February 2017 brought together EMODnet experts in Brussels to collaborate on ‘Stress-testing European Marine Data – Towards a European Ocean Observing System’.

On 13 February 2017, an introduction to open science, and an introduction work package 2: Data mobilization framework (lead by the LifeWatch team at the INBO) were presented at the TrIAS kick-off meeting.