The Census of Marine Life is a global project lasting for 10 years that recorded the diversity, distribution, and abundance of life in the ocean.

The Census consisted of three major themes around these questions:

1. What has lived in the oceans?
2. What does live in the oceans?
3. What will live in the oceans?

They work around different projects. During its investigation, the Census involved 2,700 scientists from more than 80 countries who spent 9,000 days at sea participating in more than 540 census-badged expeditions, as well as uncounted nearshore sampling events. Many thousands of records of previously known species, Census scientists found more than 6,000 new marine species and had completed formal descriptions of 1,200 of them up to 2010. This is important as it can help the marine life.