VI-62 



SECTION 2. "GRAY" DATA 



There is a vast quantity of information which would be extremely useful 

 at all levels of management if it were readily available. This so- 

 called "gray" data exists, but it requires a special level of effort 

 to secure it and put it in a form useful for management purposes. 



These are the kinds of information that are collected by Federal, 

 State or local agencies as a matter of routine operation and merely 

 filed away when they have served their purpose. For example, routine 

 water quality measurements over shellfish beds, or a Leach access toll 

 bridge receipts, or numbers and kinds of Corps of Engineers dredging 

 permits issued, would all provide pertinent information to estuarine 

 management if readily available. 



These kinds of information exist also in unpublished reports on contracts 

 designed to satisfy a need. For example, a contractor's report to a 

 State planning board on the need for more parks might never be published 

 but would still contain valuable information to estuarine management 

 if it were readily available. Many unpublished reports and informal 

 technical memoranda will be released for public use if they can be 

 found — but they do not appear in indexes or bibliographies; special 

 efforts are required to find them. 



A third kind of "gray" data is information that is available from 

 published material but requires particular skill or effort to extract 

 it. For example, the areas and volumes of all estuarine systems in 



