Many applications require a list of species that are likely to be found in the marine waters around the British Isles and adjacent seas. The MSBIAS list can be used for this purpose and, furthermore, if used widely will improve the ability to exchange species data between applications. The marine area covered by this list is shown on the website. The boundaries given in the map are recognized not to represent true boundaries of species distributions however does allow operational use of a taxon list.

This list is a subset of taxa registered in the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS), that was identified through data holdings of the applications "Marine Recorder" and "Unicorn", and collated under the project "Pan-European Species directories Infrastructure (PESI)".