sentences:  Ausubel was instrumental in persuading the Foundation to fund a series of "feasibility workshops" over the period 1997-1998 into how the project might be conducted, one result of these workshops being the broadening of the initial concept from a "Census of the Fishes" into a comprehensive "Census of Marine Life".Results from these workshops, plus associated invited contributions, formed the basis of a special issue of "Oceanography" magazine in 1999; later that year, a workshop in Washington, D.C. addressed the formation of an Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS) which would serve to collate existing knowledge about the distribution of organisms in the ocean and form the information management component of the Census.The Census began in a formal sense with the announcement in May 2000 of eight grants totaling about 4 million US$ to create OBIS, as reported in "Science" magazine, 2 June.