18 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM vol. 123 



Primary productivity, a measurement of the richness of environ- 

 ment and potential food supply, eventually may prove useful for 

 comparison with bird distribution. At present, however, because 

 there is no universally agreed-upon measure of productivity, we have 

 used surface phosphate and plankton abundance as measures of the 

 marine environment. 



The data stored on tape reels in the computer may be altered 

 through a revised program if these or any later modifications become 

 necessary. 



With some modifications, the coding used in this pilot seabird ADP 

 system is suitable for storage of seabird records voluntarily sent in 

 from all over the world to a central office or offices such as World 

 Data Centers A and B for Oceanography in Washington and Moscow. 

 Information submitted on standardized forms would be available for 

 use by marine ornithologists and ecologists. The establishment of a 

 world center for the storage of seabird distribution data and inter- 

 national agreement on uniform methods of observation, recording, 

 and coding of data were two basic recommendations of a seabird 

 committee authorized by the 14th International Ornithological 

 Congress, Oxford, July 1966. 



Varying reliability of observations and different techniques for 

 gathering data, however, probably will necessitate uniform editing 

 before the data are fed into the system. This suggests the need for a 

 central editor for all the data and a staff to prepare them for entry. 

 As an indication of the extent of the work that may be needed to 

 prepare data for computer storage, two persons worked full time 

 eight hours a day for 50 days transferring the raw at-sea data from 

 the Cromwell cruises onto intermediate coded sheets before they could 

 be punched into the system. Because of the far larger volume of 

 data that may be collected by many more observers from all over the 

 world in an international program, it might be necessary for them to 

 submit data to the proposed editor or central files already translated 

 onto intermediate coded sheets. 



The worldwide scope of such a seabird data storage project and the 

 fact that many species of seabirds associate with commercially 

 valuable schooling fish make this an attractive candidate for support 

 under the International Biological Program, the major theme of 

 which is productivity and man. 



