Regional OBIS Nodes (RONs) are organizations that have committed to a continued support of OBIS within a geographic and/or national region using resources they have obtained. This includes serving data online and developing a data provider and end-user community. Some RONs provide tools, different language versions of the OBIS website, and/or provide mirror sites for the OBIS portal.
The OBIS MC is composed of the Manager of each Regional OBIS Node. The present OBIS MC will be transformed in the IODE Steering Group for OBIS by the end of 2010. Members include
- Antarctica: Bruno Danis, Belgian Biodiversity Platform, Belgium
- Argentina: Mirtha Lewis, Centro Nacional Patagónico (CENPAT) CONICET Argentina
- Australia: Tony Rees, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)
- Canada: Tana Worcester, Centre of Marine Biodiversity, Bedford Institute of Oceanography. Tana is temporarily being replaced by Mary Kennedy
- China: Xiaoxia Sun, Institute of Oceanology, Qingdao
- Europe: Francisco (Tjess) Hernandez, Vlaams Instituut voor de Zee (VLIZ) Belgium
- Indian Ocean: Narayanan Saravanane, Centre for Marine Living Resources and the Environment, Ministry of the environment, India
- Japan: Katsuhiko Tanaka, Japan agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, Japan
- Korea: Sung-Dae Kim, Korea Ocean Research & Development Institute, Korea
- South-West Pacific: Kevin Mackay, National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research, New Zealand
- Sub-Saharan Africa: Marten Grundlingh, Southern African Data Centre for Oceanography, South Africa
- Tropical and Subtropical Eastern South Pacific: Ruben Escribano, FONDAP COPAS,Chile
- Tropical and Subtropical Western South Atlantic: Fábio L. da Silveira and Rubens M. Lopes, University of São Paulo, Brazil
- USA: Mark Fornwall, US Geological Survey, USA
Discussions are ongoing with several more organisations to start a Regional OBIS node:
- Gulf of Aden: Michel Claereboudt, Sultan Qabus University, Oman
- South-East Asia: Deng Palomares, Fishbase Information and Research Group (FIN), Philippines
Former OBIS MC members are:
- Robert Branton, Canada
- Vishwas Chavan, India
- Youn-Ho Lee, Korea
- Alicja Mosbauer, Australia
- Don Robertson, New Zealand
- Junko Shimura, Japan
- Song Sun, China,
- Edward Vanden Berghe, Europe
