An Environmental Services Data and Information Management (ESDIM)
Historical Data Rescue Project

Researchers from the School for Marine Science and Technology (SMAST) at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, have collaborated with Kenneth Sherman, Senior Biological Oceanographer and Chief of the Ecosystem Monitoring Branch of the Northeast Fisheries Science Center at NOAA, in the rescue of historical oceanographic data from the northeast United States continental shelf region.

For our part, SMAST personnel have scoured the National Archives in Washington, DC, and Maryland, as well as a variety of New England archives for physical, chemical and biological data dating back to the early 1800s. The project focus was on converting the original archived, hand-written paper records, that were collected by the early Coast Survey and US Fish Commission, to an electronic form. These data are retrieved from various regional and national archives and processed with some quality control before being entered into the database accessible from this web site.

Project Manager: Wendell Brown
wbrown@umassd.edu · 508.910.6395

• ESDIM Database Access
Physical Data
Lightship Data
Biological Data

• About ESDIM: "Searching the Past for Keys to the Future" : a discussion of preliminary results (2002)