The Future of Marine Animal Populations (FMAP) is a network of scientists within the Census of Marine Life trying to understand the past, present and future of marine life. FMAP has a strong emphasis on statistical modeling of patterns derived from biological data. Our focus is on data synthesis, often by means of meta-analysis, which is the formal integration of many data sets to answer a common question. Some of the questions that FMAP seeks to answer are:

   - What are the global patterns of marine biodiversity?
   - What are the major drivers explaining diversity patterns and changes?
   - What is the total number of species in the ocean (known and unknown)?
   - How has the abundance of major species groups changed over time?
   - What are the ecosystem consequences of fishing and climate change?
   - How is the distribution of animals in the ocean changing?
   - How is the movement of animals determined by their behavior and environment?

FMAP attempts to describe and synthesize globally changing patterns of species abundance, distribution, and diversity, and to model the effects of fishing, climate change and other key variables on those patterns. This work is done across ocean realms and with an emphasis on understanding past changes and predicting future scenarios.