The Southern Ocean is a unique environment with a rich biodiversity, from marine mammals and seabirds to krill and thriving benthic communities. Many Antarctic species, such as krill and various fish species, are important living resources and have significant economic value.  

The region is experiencing rapid change in some areas while remaining relatively untouched by human activities. At the same time, these ecosystems are under severe threat from climate change and other stressors. While our understanding of Southern Ocean biological processes (e.g. species distributions, feeding ecology, reproduction) has greatly improved in recent years, biological data for the region remains patchy and scarce. 

Bringing together the large variety of biological data is an essential requirement to enable researchers to study and maintain healthy and stable ecosystems. Therefore an Antarctic Biodiversity Portal was set up to streamline all marine and terrestrial Antarctic biodiversity data.