The NERACOOS website is how we deliver the ocean data you need, and we’re proud that it has served the people and organizations of our region for many years. Because we take pride in our work, we want our site and data products to be useful, secure and reliable.
That’s why we’ve determined that in order to fulfill our mission to provide accessible ocean data, it’s time to update our website and data products. Don’t worry, this process will not happen all at once! We will make sure to give you plenty of advanced notice before anything is moved or retired. The buoy map, our most popular tool, has been redesigned as the Mariners’ Dashboard, which consolidates real-time conditions, forecasts, and more into a single product. While the current buoy map will be retired, the data our users depend on are not going anywhere.
Other NERACOOS data products are also being refreshed: they’ll serve the same data, but the way the data are presented will look different. Some products will continue to be available but in a different location on our website. A few older products will be fully retired and no longer available.
We did not make this choice lightly. Several factors influenced our decision: for one, we want our products to be dependable. We cannot update our current website with the newest software because some of our older data products aren’t compatible with it. We need to transition to a newer technology that is secure and can make full use of advances in the science of ocean observing. Out-of-date software also influences our ability to do other things, like add certain kinds of content or change the way the site is arranged. We want to make it easier for people to find the information they’re looking for, and be able to more clearly show what we do and who we are.
Significant change can be difficult, but we hope you can understand our reasoning. Again, this transition will happen gradually; we will be sure to share the plan and page statuses each step of the way. Thank you for being a NERACOOS user and we look forward to hearing your feedback on the new site.
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