Progress report for
Contributing EUR 500 000 to support the Sustainable Seabed Knowledge Initiative (SsKi)
Achievement at a glance
The SsKI Initiative is a 10 years’ initiative. The EU financed the kick-off phase.The International Seabed Authority (ISA), together with scientific partners, identified 61 new species and another 35 are in the pipeline of identification. The goal of the first phase of the Initiative the EU contributed to was to identify at least 50 new species, so the project has reached its goal.
Challenges faced in implementation
The objective to set up an underwater reference catalogue which was originally designed as an imagine catalogue, shifted to establishing a genetic sequence data catalogue. There was a scientific push in this new direction from the Workshop on “Enhancing Biological Data Sharing to Advance Deep-Sea Taxonomy” held in Korea in 2023 Workshop on Enhancing Biological Data Sharing to Advance Deep-Sea Taxonomy - International Seabed Authority.Next Steps
Bénédicte CaremierBeneficiaries
The main beneficiary of this action was the International Seabed Authority: the institution that launched the Sustainable Seabed Knowledge Initiative (SsKi).