Biogeographic data in the OBIS-SEAMAP database can be explored using the Advanced Search, a set of advanced mapping and visualization tools. Biogeographic data are classified based on the data type and platform:

• Visual sightings: Vessel, aircraft or land-based
• Telemetry of tagged aminals
• Passive acousitc detections: Mobile or stationary sensors
• Sea turtle nesting (in association with the SWOT initiative)

The Advanced Search allows you to find biogegraphic data that meet your taxonomic and/or spatio-temporal interests. Criteria you can set up to extract data are:

• Multiple taxa of your interest at any ranks of the taxonomic hierarchy (e.g. species, genus, family, order, class).
• You can further specify whether or not to include branching taxa belonging to a parent taxon.
• Species conservation status based on the US ESA and IUCN Redlist.
• Multiple datasets of your interest
• Regions of interst or your study areas. A region can be drawn online in a rectangle or polygon shape. Even in a circle shape.
• Biogeographic (e.g. Large Marine Ecosystems [LME]) or jurisdictinal (EEZs) regions.
• You can also extract data beyond those regions (e.g. species occurence beyond EEZs)
• Temporal ranges at various scales (e.g. year, year and month).
• Months or seasons
• You can combine a time series range and months of your interest (e.g. summer months from 1990 to 2000).
• Hours. This is particularly useful to observe animals' diel behaviors. Again, this criterion can be combined to other temporal criteria.
• Associated oceanographic variables including sea surface temperature, sea surface height, sea surface Chlorophyll-a

Once you set up your criteria, the occurrence data are mapped and the summaries (e.g. #records, #species etc) of the extracted data are presented. you can find:

• What species are found
• What datasets contribute to the occurence data
• Spatial distribution of the extracted data
• Temporal distribution of the extracted data

There are two types of layers to map the extracted data:

• Distributions of the data aggregated by unit cell at three spatial resolutions (1/0.1/0.01 degree)
• Individual records as points

The Dataset or Species Page on the OBIS-SEAMAP web site can be accessed via a direct link to these pages.
All you need to know is the Dataset ID or species ITIS Taxonomic Serial Number (TSN). Dataset IDs or species TSNs are found at various ways/places including non-interactive Species List or Datasets List.

• Direct link to a Dataset Page: https://seamap.env.duke.edu/dataset/dataset_id
  where dataset_id is the dataset ID.
• Direct link to a Species Profile Page: https://seamap.env.duke.edu/species/tsn
  where tsn is the ITIS taxonomic serial number of the species.

While the above links take you to the interactive web page for more exploration, there are static versions of the page.

• Link to a static Species Profile Page: https://seamap.env.duke.edu/species/tsn/html
  
• Link to a static Dataset Page (in HTML format): https://seamap.env.duke.edu/dataset/dataset_id/html
• Link to a FGDC-compliant metadata page (in XML format): https://seamap.env.duke.edu/dataset/dataset_id/xml

OBIS-SEAMAP supports OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) web services such as WMS, WFS and KML.

Data accesses using OGC services are available through the Advanced Search. After you have set up the criteria to extract data, go through the download process and choose[KML (Google Earth-ready)], [OCG WFS] or [OCG WMS].

However, OBIS-SEAMAP currently does not support more direct accesses to OGC services.