Marine Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning
EU Network of Excellence

 
Main Menu

· Home
· Contacts
· Data Systems
· Documents
· FAQ
· Links
· MarBEF Open Archive
· Network Description
· Outreach
· Photo Gallery
· Quality Assurance
· Register of Resources
· Research Projects
· Rules and Guidelines
· Training
· Wiki
· Worldconference

 

Register of Resources (RoR)

 People  |  Datasets  |  Literature  |  Institutes  |  Projects 

[ report an error in this record ] Print this page

MSBIAS: Marine Species of Britain, Ireland and Adjacent Seas
Citation
The UK Marine Environmental Data and Information Network (2026). Marine Species of Britain, Ireland and Adjacent Seas (MSBIAS): a checklist of species derived from the UNICORN and Marine Recorder applications. Accessed at https://www.marinespecies.org/msbias on yyyy-mm-dd. https://marineinfo.org/doc/dataset/3123
Contact: Marine Environmental Data and Information Network (MEDIN) ;

Access data
Dedicated website
Availability: Creative Commons License This dataset is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Description

A list of species in the marine waters around Britain, Ireland and Adjacent Seas.

more

Many applications require a list of species that are likely to be found in the marine waters around Britain and Ireland and the adjacent seas. This list can be used for this purpose and furthermore, if used widely will improve the ability to exchange species data between applications. The marine area covered by this list is shown below. The boundaries given in the map are recognized not to represent true boundaries of species distributions, nor infer ownership of any water body however the boundaries do allow operational use of a taxon list.

To download the full list, carry out a search and then click ‘download results’ in the result window.

This list started as a geographic subset of taxa from the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) that were originally identified through data holdings of the applications Marine Recorder and Unicorn and collated under the project ‘Pan-European Species directories Infrastructure (PESI)’. The MSBIAS list is now actively maintained through the UK MEDIN partnership to reflect those species present in the waters of the British Isles and adjacent seas.


Scope
Themes:
Biology, Biology > Ecology - biodiversity
Keywords:
Marine/Coastal · Brackish water · Classification · Species · Taxonomy · Atlantic Ocean · Britain · Celtic Sea · English Channel · Ireland · Irish Sea · North Sea · Animalia · Bacteria · Chromista · Fungi · Plantae · Protozoa

Geographical coverage
Atlantic Ocean [Marine Regions]
Britain [Marine Regions]
Celtic Sea [Marine Regions]
English Channel [Marine Regions]
Ireland [Marine Regions]
Irish Sea [Marine Regions]
North Sea [Marine Regions]

Temporal coverage
From 1758 on [In Progress]

Taxonomic coverage
Animalia [WoRMS]
Bacteria [WoRMS]
Chromista [WoRMS]
Fungi [WoRMS]
Plantae [WoRMS]
Protozoa [WoRMS]

Parameters
Taxonomy

Contributors
Marine Environmental Data and Information Network (MEDIN)data creatordata ownerdata manager
Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ), moredatabase developer

Related datasets
Published in:
WoRMS: World Register of Marine Species, more

Dataset status: In Progress
Data type: Data
Data origin: Literature research
Metadatarecord created: 2012-07-17
Information last updated: 2026-02-23
All data in the Integrated Marine Information System (IMIS) is subject to the VLIZ privacy policy


If any information here appears to be incorrect, please contact us
Back to Register of Resources
 
Quick links

MarBEF WIKI

Erasmus Mundus Master of Science in Marine Biodiversity and Conservation (EMBC)
Outreach

Science
Responsive Mode Programme (RMP) - Marie Nordstrom, copyright Aspden Rebecca

WoRMS
part of WoRMS logo

ERMS 2.0
Epinephelus marginatus Picture: JG Harmelin

EurOBIS

Geographic System

Datasets

 


Web site hosted and maintained by Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ) - Contact data-at-marbef.org