The Marine Biosecurity Porthole contains the most complete source of information on the national distribution of non-native marine species in New Zealand.
Distribution records in the portal come from four principal sources:
- Port Biological Baseline Surveys,
- Marine High Risk Site Surveillance,
- Marine Invasive Taxonomic Service,
- Other verified observations of non-native marine species.
This website was developed in partnership between the Biosecurity New Zealand and NIWA, with the support of Silverstripe and Catalyst.
NIWA contracted the Wellington based web development companies Catalyst, to design and build the portal to specifications developed by Biosecurity New Zealand and NIWA. Catalyst used the Open Source content management system (CMS) called SilverStripe, to build the portal. Graphic design for the site was styled by Catalyst. The web mapping client is WebAppBuilder for ArcGIS built into ArcGIS Online by ESRI. Most of the Open Source components are supported by the Open Source Geospatial Foundation.