The concept for the Census of Marine was being developed around the same time as the concept for POGO (see Jesse Ausubel’s recollections). It was envisaged from the outset that “an organization like POGO will be absolutely essential for the success of the Census of Marine Life” in the words of Jesse Ausubel, who was instrumental in the establishment and success of both initiatives. From the outset, POGO had a strong focus on biological observations, and obtained a grant from the Sloan Foundation to organise a workshop in 2002 on biodiversity in South America, jointly with CoML. The aim of the workshop was “to assess what is known and unknown about biodiversity in the oceans around South America”. The workshop was instrumental in organising the South American participation in CoML, for example through the establishment of a South American CoML Steering Committee and the decision to establish a South American node for the Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS). POGO and CoML also teamed up in 2007 to produce two videos for the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) Ministerial Summit, once again with funding from the Sloan Foundation. One was on ocean observations for societal benefit, and the other on marine biodiversity observations. To find out more about the beginnings of CoML read this article published in Oceanography by Jesse Ausubel in 1999.