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🌊 OBIS Ocean Biodiversity Information System Scraper

🚀 Export marine species occurrences in seconds. Pull observations, taxonomic checklists, statistics, and dataset metadata from the Ocean Biodiversity Information System by scientific name, taxon, geometry (WKT polygon), date range, or depth. No sign-up needed.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-05-15 · 📊 Up to 50 fields per occurrence · 🐠 200,000+ marine species · 🌍 Global ocean coverage · 🗓️ Centuries of observations

The OBIS Scraper pulls from the official Ocean Biodiversity Information System catalogue, the world's largest open repository of marine species occurrence data. Each record carries up to 50 structured fields, including the scientific name with authorship, WoRMS AphiaID, full taxonomic hierarchy (kingdom through species), event date, basis of record, decimal latitude and longitude, depth, sea-surface temperature, salinity, locality, dataset provenance, and quality-control flags.

Coverage spans 200,000+ marine species observed across every ocean, coastline, and inland sea on Earth, with records contributed by 30+ regional OBIS nodes and thousands of source datasets reaching back to the 19th century. Choose between four modes (occurrence records, taxonomic checklist, statistics summary, dataset index), filter by scientific name, AphiaID, OBIS node, geometry, depth, or date, and download as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML in under three minutes.

📋 What the OBIS Scraper does

Four modes combine with up to nine filters in a single run:

• 🐠 Occurrence mode. One row per species observation with full taxonomy, geography, depth, oceanographic context, and provenance.
• 📋 Checklist mode. One row per taxon with record counts, environment flags (marine, brackish, freshwater, terrestrial), and category.
• 📊 Statistics mode. Aggregated summary counts for the matching filter.
• 📚 Dataset mode. Index of contributing OBIS datasets with title, citation, abstract, intellectual rights, record counts, spatial extent, and contributing institutes.

Filters available across modes: scientific name, taxon ID (WoRMS AphiaID), OBIS node UUID, QC flags, start/end dates, WKT geometry polygon, depth min/max. Switch on compact mode to drop low-value fields for slimmer rows.

💡 Why it matters: marine biodiversity data underpins MPA design, climate-driven range-shift modelling, and fisheries management. Building your own pipeline means dealing with paged result sets, taxonomy joins, and dataset citation tracking. This Actor handles it all on every run.

🎬 Full Demo

🚧 Coming soon: a 3-minute walkthrough showing how to go from sign-up to a downloaded marine biodiversity dataset.

⚙️ Input

Example: 200 white shark occurrences worldwide.

{
"maxItems":200,
"mode":"occurrence",
"scientificName":"Carcharodon carcharias"
}

Example: every shark/ray (Class Chondrichthyes) sighting in the western Mediterranean since 2020.

{
"maxItems":500,
"mode":"occurrence",
"geometry":"POLYGON((-5 36,-5 44,15 44,15 36,-5 36))",
"startDate":"2020-01-01"
}

⚠️ Good to Know: OBIS records are contributed by thousands of source datasets and span centuries of observation. Coordinate precision varies (museum records can have hundreds of metres of uncertainty; modern GPS observations resolve to metres). Always check coordinateUncertaintyInMeters and the QC flags before using records for safety- or policy-critical work.

📊 Output

Each occurrence record contains up to 50 fields including taxonomy, geography, oceanography, and provenance. Download the dataset as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

🧾 Schema

📦 Sample record

✨ Why choose this Actor

🌍 OBIS is the official ocean component of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and is cited in thousands of peer-reviewed marine biology and conservation papers.

📈 How it compares to alternatives

Pick this Actor when you need clean, structured marine occurrence data with WKT polygon filtering and zero parser overhead.

🚀 How to use

1. 📝 Sign up. Create a free account with $5 credit (takes 2 minutes).
2. 🌐 Open the Actor. Go to the OBIS Scraper page on the Apify Store.
3. 🎯 Set input. Pick a mode, supply a scientific name or AphiaID, optionally add a WKT polygon and date range.
4. 🚀 Run it. Click Start and let the Actor collect your biodiversity data.
5. 📥 Download. Grab your results in the Dataset tab as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

⏱️ Total time from sign-up to downloaded dataset: 3-5 minutes. No coding required.

💼 Business use cases

🔌 Automating OBIS Scraper

Control the scraper programmatically for scheduled runs and pipeline integrations:

• 🟢 Node.js. Install the apify-client NPM package.
• 🐍 Python. Use the apify-client PyPI package.
• 📚 See the Apify documentation for full details.

The Apify Schedules feature lets you trigger this Actor on any cron interval. Monthly or quarterly refreshes keep downstream biodiversity dashboards in sync automatically.

🌟 Beyond business use cases

Marine biodiversity data powers more than commercial workflows. The same structured records support research, education, civic projects, and personal initiatives.

🤖 Ask an AI assistant about this scraper

Open a ready-to-send prompt about this ParseForge actor in the AI of your choice:

• 💬 ChatGPT
• 🧠 Claude
• 🔍 Perplexity
• 🅒 Copilot

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

🧩 How does it work?

Pick a mode, supply a scientific name or AphiaID, optionally add a WKT polygon and date range, click Start, and the Actor returns clean structured rows with full taxonomy, geography, and oceanographic context.

📏 How accurate is the data?

OBIS records come from thousands of source datasets and centuries of observations. Coordinate precision varies. Modern GPS observations resolve to metres. Older museum records can have hundreds of metres of uncertainty. Always check coordinateUncertaintyInMeters and QC flags before using records for safety- or policy-critical work.

📐 How do I scope to a specific area?

Use the geometry input with a WKT polygon. For example, POLYGON((-5 36,-5 44,15 44,15 36,-5 36)) covers the western Mediterranean. WKT is supported by every GIS tool, so you can draw a polygon in QGIS or Shapely and paste the result.

🧬 What is an AphiaID?

A unique numeric identifier from the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS), the authoritative marine taxonomy registry. Use AphiaID instead of scientific name when you need precise taxonomic resolution that survives synonym renames.

🌳 What is the OBIS node system?

OBIS is decentralised across 30+ regional nodes (e.g. EurOBIS for Europe, OBIS-USA for the United States) that aggregate contributions from local datasets. Filter by nodeId to scope a query to one regional node's holdings.

🔁 How often is the dataset refreshed?

OBIS updates continuously as contributors add new records. Every run of this Actor pulls live data, so your dataset reflects the current state at run time.

⏰ Can I schedule regular runs?

Yes. Use Apify Schedules to run this Actor on any cron interval (monthly, quarterly, annually) and keep downstream biodiversity dashboards in sync.

⚖️ Is this data legal to use?

OBIS publishes under permissive open-data licences (typically CC0 or CC-BY) that allow commercial and non-commercial reuse with attribution. Per-dataset licences vary, so review individual intellectualRights fields when republishing.

💳 Do I need a paid Apify plan to use this Actor?

No. The free Apify plan is enough for testing and small runs (10 records per run). A paid plan lifts the limit and gives you access to scheduling, higher concurrency, and larger datasets.

🔁 What happens if a run fails or gets interrupted?

Apify automatically retries transient errors. If a run still fails, you can inspect the log in the Runs tab, fix the input, and re-run. Partial datasets from failed runs are preserved so you never lose progress.

🆘 What if I need help?

Our support team is here to help. Contact us through the Apify platform or use the Tally form linked below.

🔌 Integrate with any app

OBIS Scraper connects to any cloud service via Apify integrations:

• Make - Automate multi-step workflows
• Zapier - Connect with 5,000+ apps
• Slack - Get run notifications in your channels
• n8n - Self-hosted automation pipelines
• Pipedream - Event-driven workflow automation
• Airbyte - Pipe biodiversity data into your warehouse
• GitHub - Trigger runs from commits and releases
• Google Drive - Export datasets straight to Sheets

You can also use webhooks to trigger downstream actions when a run finishes. Push fresh marine biodiversity data into your product backend, or alert your team in Slack.

🔗 Recommended Actors

• 🌳 GBIF Biodiversity Scraper - Global biodiversity occurrences (land + ocean)
• 🦅 iNaturalist Scraper - Citizen-science species observations
• 🌊 NOAA Weather Scraper - U.S. and global weather and ocean data
• 🏞️ ProtectedPlanet WDPA Scraper - World Database on Protected Areas
• 🐟 FishBase Scraper - Global fish species reference

💡 Pro Tip: browse the complete ParseForge collection for more reference-data scrapers.

🆘 Need Help? Open our contact form to request a new scraper, propose a custom data project, or report an issue.

⚠️ Disclaimer: this Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by OBIS, IOC-UNESCO, or any of its contributing nodes. All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. Only publicly available open biodiversity data is collected.