Twelve museums and natural science collections from Bremen, Hamburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein joined forces in April 2010 to form the North and Baltic Sea Region Museum Network “NORe”. The individual network partners are characterized by a regional and collection-specific reference to the North Sea and Baltic Sea region. The focus is not only on the aquatic habitat, but also on the terrestrial landscapes influenced by the North and Baltic Seas.

The collections of the NORe institutions together contain over 20 million zoological objects, which are available for international and joint research. These include more than 5,000 type specimens as original reference objects on which the scientific descriptions of animal species are based. 

The museums work on joint research projects and cooperate on collection management and educational work. More than one million people visit the museums of the NORe network every year.