OCEAN-UKRAINE is a three-year (March 2007 - August 2009) interdisciplinary project, that involves the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ) and two major Ukranian marine institutions: the Institute of Biology of the Southern Seas (IBSS) and the Marine Hydrophysical Institute (MHI). The general objective is to strengthen capacity in these institutes and to integrate them in European networks through a bilateral partnership with Flanders.

Three main topics of work are planned: General activities of the National Oceanographic Data Centre (NODC) and strengthening of existing infrastructure, including creation of a national distributed data centre; Biological data management, including data archeology and rescue; Oceanographic data management, including the creation of a Virtual Laboratory and operational data management systems.

The project will be run in conjunction with the bilateral Flanders-Bulgaria Project SIBEMA (BUL/015/05). Joint activities are hoped to be the embryo of the Ocean Data and Information Network for the Black Sea (ODINBlackSea) that will unite all Black Sea Countries.