What's DOBIS?


Spatial and Temporal Understanding of the Ocean Biosystem

Three-point-eight-billion years ago, life appeared in the sea and evolved to establish a rich and complicated system of life on the planet earth. Living activity in the sea has created favorable environmental conditions for the whole biosphere. It is because of the existence of the sea, which covers 70% of the earthfs surface, that the global environment has been maintained in a healthy condition. Furthermore, the sea has provided human beings with marine biological resources.

However, for several decades an explosive increase of human activity has caused many serious problems such as global warming, climate change, marine pollution, and depletion of natural resources. This could cause the ocean to lose its buffering capability and reduce the production of important resources, and therefore, threaten human beings and the biosphere itself. We need to understand without delay, as much as we can about life in the sea and the structure and function of the complex "biosystem" that consists of a wide variety of marine creatures in order to avoid a food crisis and to restore the ocean and global environment to its previous rich and productive condition.

Thus, the objectives of this multidisciplinary research effort are to determine the structure and function of marine organisms and their ecosystems, which have varied greatly throughout the history of earth and will likely continue to change in the future, so we can better understand the overall dynamics of the ocean biosystem. Furthermore, we hope to establish a new "philosophy of life" based on the knowledge of the ocean, which would reconstruct the previous one that is mainly based on terrestrial ecology.

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Copyright (c) 2000. Ocean Research Institute, The University of Tokyo.