The SeamountsOnline system has had a major system failure. We are assessing our options for rebuilding the site and finding a new server, but this may take some time as the SeamountsOnline project is no longer funded. In the meantime, there are two ways to you can access the SeamountsOnline data:
The international OBIS portal. To access only SeamountsOnline data once on the OBIS site, go Search Data, click on the Datasets bar in the left-hand menu, click on CoML in the Provider list, and then on SeamountsOnline in the dataset list that opens. You can add further search restrictions on taxa, region, date, etc. if desired. OBIS holds all the species occurrence data in SeamountsOnline, but it does not hold the associated sample type or seamount information. If sample or seamount information is important to you, please use the download option, below.
Download the data. The full data from SeamountsOnline can be downloaded as a set zipped CSV files. Click to download
If you are having difficulty, please
What is SeamountsOnline?
Since 2001, SeamountsOnline has been gathering data on species that have been
observed or collected from seamounts and providing these data through a freely-available
online portal. It is designed to facilitate research into seamount ecology,
and to act as a resource for managers. It is also the database component of
the Global Census of Marine Life on Seamounts.
Who are we?
SeamountsOnline is led by Karen Stocks, a researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
Data Contents
SeamountsOnline holds data on species that have been recorded from seamounts. We do not follow a
strict geological definition of a seamount, so data on features smaller than
1000m high are included. Both hydrothermally-active and non-active seamounts
are included, though the coverage is better for non-venting seamounts. SeamountsOnline
is no longer a funded project, and the contents are no longer being expanded. Please
note that the contents of SeamountsOnline are not complete - it does not hold all existing seamount species information.
The Seamount
Catalog holds data on seamount geology and
morphology, including high-resolution maps from multibeam data.
Looking for seamount location datasets?
SeamountsOnline holds information only on the couple of hundred seamounts for which it has species occurrence data. If you are looking for a dataset with the predicted locations of all seamounts, the following references will provide a starting point:
Yesson, C., M. R. Clark, M. L. Taylor, A. D. Rogers (2011). The global distribution of seamounts based on 30 arc seconds bathymetry data, Deep Sea Research Part I: Oceanographic Research Papers, Volume 58, Issue 4. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.dsr.2011.02.004.
Hillier, J. K., and A. B. Watts (2007), Global distribution of seamounts from ship-track bathymetry data, Geophys. Res. Lett., 34, L13304, doi:10.1029/2007GL029874.
Kitchingman, A., S. Lai, T. Morato, D. Pauly (2007) How many seamounts are there and where are they located? In T.J. Pitcher, T. Morato, P.J.B. Hart, M.R. Clark, N. Haggan, R.S. Santos (Eds.), Seamounts: Ecology, Fisheries & Conservation. Fish and Aquatic Resources Series 12, Blackwell Publishing, Oxford, United Kingdom (2007), pp. 26–40.DOI: 10.1002/9780470691953.ch2
Wessel, P. (2001) Global distribution of seamounts inferred from gridded Geosat/ERS-1 altimetry, J. Geophys. Res., 106(B9), 19431–19441, doi:10.1029/2000JB000083.
