About the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary Website

Welcome to the official website of Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.

Purpose and Organization

The Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary website provides information about the responsibilities and activities of the sanctuary, as well as general information and resources about the natural and cultural resources that the sanctuary protects.

The site offers several categories of content. Under About, visitors can learn about the history, accomplishments, and administration of Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary as well as find contact information for sanctuary staff. Under Visit, visitors will find information to help them plan a visit to the sanctuary, including frequently asked questions, information about the Florida Keys Eco-Discovery Center, tips for using sanctuary resources, and a calendar of events. Under Explore, visitors can learn about the resources that the sanctuary protects in a ‘question and answer’ format. Under the Get Involved section of the site, visitors can find volunteer and internship opportunities.

Under Management, visitors can learn about tools and philosophies governing sanctuary management. The Science section of the site explains the various research, monitoring, assessment, and restoration activities that occur within Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. Under Maritime Heritage, visitors can read information about current sanctuary projects, the sanctuary’s Shipwreck Trail, and the sanctuary’s inventory of cultural resources.

We hope you enjoy the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary website and find the information provided here helpful.

Accessibility

Every attempt has been made to make this site compliant with Section 508 of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Additionally, we have provided a link to a detailed Site Map on every page. This index provides a direct link to most pages in the site for simple text navigation.

Please notify us of any specific accessibility problems that you encounter, or any suggestions you might have on how we could improve the site's access. Please email these comments and suggestions to: floridakeys@noaa.gov.

Editorial Policy

This site is managed by the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, National Ocean Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce. As a federal government site, all federal editorial policies apply, such as those on privacy, copyright, commercial promotion, etc.

Materials posted on this site are reviewed by sanctuary professional staff prior to publishing. Final decisions are made by the site's managing editor and the sanctuary superintendent. All material on the site resides in the public domain and can be freely distributed, unless otherwise noted. Use of appropriate photo and image credits is requested.

Technical Information

Access Time. Some pages on this site contain numerous images. The images provide necessary visual supplements for the text and enhance the visual appeal of the page. All images have been provided with captions to allow those users who cannot load images immediately to select specific images for viewing. Pages have been developed to load text first.

Links. Links are provided to many external websites as reference or supplemental material. External sites that are accessed by these links will launch a new browser session in a single, separate browser window. Each external site that is accessed will appear in this same browser window until the window is closed. Some links to non-U.S. government sites are included. Users are notified that they are leaving a U.S. government website by a separate page that appears on screen for approximately 20 seconds.

Fonts and Type Sizes. Verdana is the default font for this site; 10 point is the default size. All browsers allow users to select specific fonts and type sizes for display. Some users select large type sizes for ease of reading, or specific fonts for personal tastes. The text and layout should not be adversely affected by a user's selection of alternative fonts and type sizes.

Printing Pages. This site has been designed to ensure simple printing. We recommend printing in landscape format at a scale of 100 percent. Printing in portrait format at 100 percent may result in some parts of the extreme right side of a page being cut off. For printing in portrait format, we recommend printing at a scale of 90 percent.

Downloadable Documents. Some documents are available on this site as downloadable files in Portable Document Format (pdf). These files can be viewed on microcomputers equipped with recent versions of Adobe Acrobat Reader. Adobe Acrobat Reader can be downloaded for free.

There are some known issues with downloading PDF documents, particularly on Windows systems, due to conflicting changes in the way in which Acrobat Reader and various browsers talk to one another. But there is a simple work-around: if you right-click (Windows) or option-click (Macintosh) on the link, the entire file will be sent to your machine, and then you can open it off your own hard drive using Acrobat Reader.

Index and Search This Site. A link to the site index and the search box appear on every page. The Site Map is a complete listing of every page on the site and includes links to each of those pages. Search is a standard word/phrase search capability for all text and documents (pdf) on the site's pages.

Advanced Features. To view videos posted on the site, users will need Adobe Flash Player or QuickTime software.

For Further Information

For questions or comments about this site, email: floridakeys@noaa.gov.