Biocean project is designed to gather the extremely large volume of data collected from different deep-sea ecosystem studies conducted by Ifremer's department "Environnement Profond" .  (Fabri M-C., 2006).

Biocean is a database coming with a six application package : 

  • two of them are used onboard research vessels to collect operational data (Alamer)

  • the others are used to link with a core database back on land. The latter are used  to: 

(1) manage the taxonomic nomenclature (Bioclass)
(2) monitor the identification of faunal collections (Gescol) 
(3) fill in chemical analyses results or measurement data files (Donenv)
(4) add or extract data from the database (EchangeTM)

 

Biocean was designed to facilitate ecosystem studies in the deep sea. It represents an important new resource for deep-sea ecologists and will have wide applications in biogeography, and biodiversity studies.

The goals of the Biocean database are:

(1) collection of operational data from research cruises

(2) organisation of faunal and environmental data in a standardized form

(3) preservation of data for studies of long-term temporal changes

Hardware configuration

The six applications within the Biocean package are designed to run on Personal Computers under Windows interface. Database access is possible through ODBC links. The Biocean database is held on a UnixTM machine under the Relational Data Base System Oracle. It is secured by an overall backup every week on magnetic cartdriges (DLT) with copies conserved in separate buildings.