From September 8th-12th 2014, the LifeWatch Species Information Backbone and EurOBIS data quality procedures were presented during the plenary sessions and round table discussions at the 49th European Marine Biology Symposium (EMBS49), at St. Petersburg, Russia.

On June 21st 2014, VLIZ and LifeWatch participated in the Ocean Sampling Day (OSD), which was organized in the framework of the MicroB3 project. The ultimate goal of OSD is to unveil the secrets of microbial life in the ocean. On OSD, oceanographers and citizens took seawater samples on no less than 187 sites worldwide. During a LifeWatch sampling campaign with the RV Simon Stevin, DNA samples for prokaryotes were collected from 17 stations in the Belgian Part of the North Sea.

On March 7th 2014, several demo sessions at the VLIZ Marine Scientist Day in Bruges (Belgium) highlighted different aspects of the Flemish LifeWatch infrastructure, and its related components:

First workshop to expand the Ocean Biodiversity Information System (OBIS) with environmental data.