News release: "A one-stop source for biogeographic information collected from U.S. waters and oceanic regions is now available from the National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) Program. The OBIS-USA website offers a unique combination of tools, resources, and biodiversity information to aide scientists, resource managers and decision makers in the research and analyses critical to sustaining the nation’s valued marine ecosystems. OBIS-USA is a one-stop source for biogeographic data collected from U.S. waters and oceanic regions--the Arctic, the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Great Lakes. It provides access to highly distributed data sets from a multitude of partners documenting where and when species were observed or collected. The site allows one to examine each data set to assess its applicability for a variety of uses. Current functionality allows the user to view the data and FGDC compliant metadata as well as to view geographic, temporal or spatial extent; the taxonomic depth and richness.