From 17-21 September 2018, the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ) and LifeWatch Belgium organized the 53rd European Marine Biology Symposium (EMBS53) in Ostend, Belgium. EMBS53 aims at linking the history, the present and the future of (European) marine biology. This edition was special, as 2018 was a celebration year in Ostend: the first marine station ever worldwide was inaugurated exactly 175 years ago, in Ostend, by professor Pierre-Joseph Van Beneden.

During this week long course, the participants got familiar with OBIS: the project, the current status of data, examples of use cases of OBIS data and training on how to access the OBIS data via the web portal, web services and database. Training was provided in the OBIS data management practices, quality control tools and data transfer protocols. During the hands-on session, 10 new datasets were formatted, quality controlled and uploaded to the server. There were discussions on how to improve the current OBIS practices, such as e.g.

This training course has covered several topics related to retrieving and submitting data to the African node of OBIS and making use of the existing quality control tools developed within LifeWatch, to assure that good quality biogeographic data are submitted. Participants came from different African countries, involved in the ODINAfrica network. After the training, several marine biogeographic datasets were submitted to AfrOBIS and have already been integrated in OBIS too. There were 18 participants from 13 countries.

On November 23rd 2014, VLIZ celebrated Science Day (Dag van de Wetenschap). For this event, and for the first time, VLIZ opened the doors of its Marine Station Ostend (MSO) and the LifeWatch laboratories for the public at large.

On October 3rd 2014, the open data efforts for LifeWatch at the INBO were presented at the Data Dive of the Flemish Open Data Day (Open Data Dag in Vlaanderen) organized by the Flemish Government in Brussels (Belgium).