Co-Convenors: Michael Feldman, Clarence Pautzke, Andrew Rosenberg (U.S.A.) and Sinjae Yoo (Korea)

The Census of Marine Life (CoML) is a global scientific initiative to assess and explain the changing diversity, distribution, and abundance of marine species in the past and present, and to build the capacity to project future diversity. CoML is the initiative of unprecedented size and scope, engaging more than 2000 scientists and ocean professionals from over 80 countries with a common mission towards improving the understanding of life in the ocean. This session will summarize the past 10 years of results from the global CoML program, highlighting specific products and how CoML information and data can be used or applied. It will open with an overview of the entire program and its accomplishments, and then delve deeper into various program components with featured speakers representing Census activities in the Arctic, deep sea, tagging and tracking, HMAP, FMAP, NaGISA, corals, DNA barcoding, microbes, and other exciting projects. Contributors will discuss findings and discoveries with particular attention to the information released at the CoML "Decade of Discovery" events in London just weeks earlier. Discussion will also center on additional ways to apply the newly released CoML information to answer the growing global questions of ocean acidification and climate change, and the role of marine biodiversity information with managing through ecosystems approaches and marine spatial planning. The session will conclude with a consideration of lessons learned from CoML, exploring some of the most successful (and some not-so successful) aspects of the program in the context of developing any future coordinated marine biodiversity efforts.