ICES: Find Geospatial data on Seas of Europe on data.europa.eu

The goal of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) is to become a world-leading marine science organisation that meets  societal needs for impartial evidence on the state and sustainable use of sea and oceans. They aim to advance and share scientific understanding of marine ecosystems and the services marine organisations provide. One of the tools they offer to achieve this goal is the metadata catalogue to easily share geographically referenced information on the exploration of the sea.

The ICES metadata catalogue is comprised of datasets organised around specific themes and services that can help search for information. The datasets are classified under the following topics: biodata, boundaries, economy, elevation, environment, geoscientific information, imagery base maps earth cover, location, oceans, and society. For example, you can find a dataset on broad habitat types in the Bulgarian Black Sea shelf or a report of a workshop about mesopelagic fishing for industry stakeholders.

ICES data is used in a wide range of sectors for example, considering research on the role of fish and fishing in the context of the marine biological carbon pump (BCP) to regulate CO2 emission. BCP is the ocean’s biological system of carbon sequestration in the deep ocean, away from the atmosphere and the land. Research focused on different ways in which fishing can impact the BCP cycle and change food diversity. Therefore, the biological system and the fishing gear is known to have direct impacts on the seafloor.

Looking for ICES geographic datasets? Since November 2022, you can find more than 1200 of their datasets on data.europa.eu, focusing on the seas of Europe.

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