Colombian Museum of Natural Marine History (MHNMC) - South America

Colombian Museum of Natural Marine History (MHNMC) of the Coastal and Marine
Research Institute - INVEMAR - is the main collection of marine species of
Colombia.

Through the MHNMC, INVEMAR has developed the Marine Biodiversity Information
System (SIBM for its initials in Spanish) in order to organize its collections
and to analyze biodiversity information. The core of this system organizes
records of the lots held in the MHNMC with their collection data as well as the
information about their placement within the collection. The core also includes
a comprehensive arrangement (including images) of the taxonomic groups
represented in the collection, including additional information about their
systematic and taxonomy from a variety of scientific sources.

Currently, the collection holds about 32,000 catalogued lots, mainly fishes,
echinoderms, crustaceans, molluscs, polychaetes and corals, mostly collected
from the Caribbean, as well as about 2,000 lots from the Colombian northern
Pacific continental shelf, and donations from universities and national and
international museums. The marine collection is now considered one of the
largest and best organized in the southern Caribbean.