MORSE : Marine Organisms Resources Storage systEm
Data from sea campaigns, operational oceanography, biological resources or data warehouses and catalogues
Creation date : 2020.
Discipline(s) : Biology, Law (legal aspects).
Partners : None.
Related projects : None.
Link to the portal :At this stage of progress (phase 1 completed), the MORSE Information System (IS) is an internal Ifremer tool which cannot be viewed externally.
Contact : morse@ifremer.fr
Description :
The subject of the traceability of biological samples has been organised into a structuring project for the Institute called MORSE (Marine Organisms Resources Storage systEm).
In 2020, the national APA coordination (Access to genetic resources and the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from their use) of Ifremer recommended the establishment of an information system capable of managing, in time and space, the traceability of the institute's biological samples in order to meet regulatory obligations, particularly APA.
The first phase of the project, between 2020 and 2024, enabled the deployment at Ifremer of a first Si MORSE interface. This IS is designed to collect traceability information in Ifremer's local banking systems (see figure below). There are no re-entries to make.

LabCollector (a LIMS laboratory information management system distributed by AgileBio) is a major tool for the MORSE Information System.
It is in fact from the local LabCollector Instances of the laboratories that MORSE harvests the traceability metadata of the samples which are then imported into the central MORSE system.
Other existing thematic IS from the Ifremer Data Centre (follow this link http://data.ifremer.fr/Centre-de-donnees/Systemes-d-information to find out more) are a source of traceability metadata for the MORSE IS : BIGOOD for the deep environment, Harmonie for fisheries, Quadrige for the coastal environment.
The effective harvesting objective of these reference SIs is included in the MORSE SI roadmap.
Among the results of the first phase of the project, we note :
- An inventory of biological samples from laboratories with census of more than 500,000 banked samples and many historical samples still to be digitized.
- A network of 40 local MORSE correspondents from 20 Ifremer laboratories
- Central support for IRSI associated with the deployment of the LIMS (Laboratory Information Management System) LabCollector within the laboratories for the monitoring of biological samples in particular, with a traceability base common to all laboratories
- A MORSE user interface for centralized administration of the information required by the institute, including :
- traceability data for laboratory samples (without re-keying)
- documents to ensure compliance with the APA level with associated compliance indicators
- Gradual compliance of Ifremer projects concerned by APA :
- 47 projects in APA compliance since 2021
- 52 projects currently of being brought into compliance
- 40 projects concerned by APA but for which Ifremer is not the coordinator