The project leader was Sydney Levitus, who was also director of the International Council for Science (ICSU) World Data Center (WDC) for Oceanography, Silver Spring.
The table shows a comparison of the number of stations by instrument type in WOD09 with previous NODC/WDC global ocean databases.
Ocean profile, plankton data, and metadata are available in the World Ocean Database for 29 depth-dependent variables (physical and biochemical) and 11 instruments types: Ocean Station Data (OSD), Mechanical Bathythermograph (MBT), Expendable Bathythermograph (XBT), Conductivity, Temperature, Depth (CTD), Undulating Oceanographic Recorder (UOR), Profiling Float (PFL), Moored Buoy (MRB), Drifting Buoy (DRB), Gliders (GLD), Autonomous Pinniped Bathythermograph (APB).
The data in the World Ocean Database are made available through the online search and retrieval system known as WODselect.
The WOAselect is a selection tool by which the user can designate a geographic area, depth, and oceanographic variable to view climatological means or related statistics for a given variable at the requested depth for the requested geographic area.