Mercator training ship expedition data - Pisces (fish)

As a citizen science volunteer, you can contribute to the rescue of invaluable information about marine biodiversity deriving from expeditions of the previous centuries. Let us take a deep breath and dive into the ocean's history together!

This set of “images” brings you the scientific observations of one of the many expeditions made by the Mercator training ship. The Mercator was in service as a training ship for the Belgian merchant fleet till August 1960 and made 41 voyages altogether, during which almost all seas have been sailed on and a great deal of ports called at. The Mercator accomplished many scientific missions and many times represented Belgium abroad.  

Why does the rescue of these data matter? Because every type of data that reveals how things were in the past in our oceans, will help us understand why things are the way they are in the present, and will then help us estimate how they may be in the future.  

You will be helping us by extracting all species observations from these reports into a specific standard digital format. Once this is done, we can make these data widely available to the scientific community and all other interested parties all over the world. These data can then be analyzed, and researchers can investigate their association with major challenges of our era, such as climate change. 

This data rescue effort is undertaken as part of the European EMODnet Biology project. EMODnet Biology provides free access to distribution data of marine species from all European regional seas. Upon digitisation, these rescued observations will be made available through this project, where they will be easily Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR). EMODnet Biology is part of the EU funded European Marine Observation and Data Network and is built upon the World Register of Marine Species and the European Ocean Biodiversity Information System (EurOBIS).