Saipan Maritime Heritage Trail Website goes live!

The "Battle of Saipan WWII Maritime Heritage Trail" is now open for business at http://www.pacificmaritimeheritagetrail.com/. The site showcases eight sites on the trail and is the result of over 4 years of expeditions to document site led by the Flinder's University Maritime Archaeology program. During those visits the MMT participated in documenting sites and participated in basic maritime archaeology training. Visit the site and enjoy the diversity of wrecks- incluind planes, assault vehicles and ships- without getting wet!

Finally... a wave buoy for Saipan

We've been hoping to see a wave buoy off of Saipan's shores for a number of years now and its finally a reality. Part of the PacIOOS ocean observing program, the buoy now hangs off of the west coast of Saipan near Tanapag. Data can be accessed through the PacIOOS Voyager viewer at http://oos.soest.hawaii.edu/pacioos/  or  http://cdip.ucsd.edu/.

FGDC Endorses Coastal and Marine Ecological Classification Standard

Meta data- data about data- is an important part of keeping monitoring datasets relevant into the future. Hard work by the CMECS program (Coastal and Marine Ecological Classification Standard) to refine coastal habitat classification used in produced metadata is now legitimate after its approval the by Federal body that governs such classifications:


The following was posted on the LinkedIn Marine Spatial Planning group by Kathy Goodin of Nature Serve:


"We are pleased to announce that the  (CMECS) has been approved by the FGDC (Federal Geographic Data Committee, see: www.fgdc.gov) as the Federal framework and hierarchy for consistent classification and description of coastal and marine ecological features in North America. 

CMECS (see pdf at: http://www.csc.noaa.gov/benthic/cmecs/) provides an extensive set of terms and definitions to describe ecological features for the geological, physical, biological, and chemical components of the environment that, together, constitute habitats and biotopes. CMECS units are accessible through the pdf document, and also through a web-based catalog (http://www.cmecscatalog.org/)."