Marine Forests, important habitats worldwide

Macroalgae, plants and animals like corals and sponges create complex habitats that provide resources, shelter and nursery grounds for many marine organisms.

Macroalgae forests

Large brown algae such as kelp or fucoids, but also by red and green algae (© D. Klug).

Seagrass meadows

Plants that evolved to live in the sea. With roots, leafs, flowers and fruits (© M. Sanfelix).

Animal gardens

Invertebrates that live attached to rock, such as corals, sponges and bivalve reefs (© NOAA).

Help the world monitoring Marine Forests

Citizens are reporting the occurrence of seaweed, seagrass, corals, and other forest-forming species to reach worldwide maps with distribution records.

records of species reported by citizen scientists.

You can also add records using iNaturalist. Just provide a photo, the date and location, no need to identify the species. The information will be available for everyone in the world! Explore all records Add your records

Recent records from citizens

Adopt a Marine Forest

By adopting a marine forest, you take part in a collective effort to observe, understand, and protect these habitats. Your contribution is simple but powerful: by returning to the same place and documenting what you see, you help build a long-term record of ecological change that would otherwise be impossible to capture.

Project Marine Forests

Project 'Marine Forests' aims to build and maintain a database of distribution records of structural benthic species of seaweeds, seagrasses and animal forests, at global scales, and to make this information freely available worldwide.

It also promotes education, marine literacy and the FAIR principle (to make data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable).