All data is in geographic coordinates unless otherwise noted. Vents data is research data and not of final archival quality. Metadata is provided for data that is near completion for archiving.

Some bathymetric grids are provided in GMT format. GMT is provided at no cost from:
http://imina.soest.hawaii.edu/gmt/

The GIS data is provided in ESRI shapefile format which has been further compressed using zip technology such as pkzip (available as shareware).

Shapefiles are composed of 3 actual files (*.shp, *.shx & *.dbf) which are compressed together in each zip file.

Text files are ascii delimited.

*.dbf (data base files) files are ASCII readable files which can be used in many other software applications such as GMT using psxy.

ESRI provides free licensed software of ArcExplorer, a GIS data browser, which allows GIS viewing, query and map-producing of these data files on Win95/NT platforms. Other software must be purchased for more analytical and display functionality. To use this data with your ArcExplorer, ArcView, or in spreadsheets/software (such as GMT's psxy) capable of reading *.dbf files, first each zip-file (*.zip) must be decompressed with pkunzip (also available as shareware).