The authors express their gratitude to all people and institutions having provided all necessary initial data, software, published materials and other scientific products to be used by a wide circle of people.

Russian version of the CD-ROM was carried out under support of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR Grant Number 01-07-90230) and with support of the International GODAR Project (POI data bases creation and International data exchange) in the frame of the Federal target program "The World Ocean" (ESIMO Subprogram).

English version is prepared on recommendations of TCODE and POC PICES committees on the 10th PICES Annual meeting, Victoria, B.C., Canada October 5-13, 2001.

Dr. I.S. Arzamastsev reviewed the manuscript in a particularly helpful way. Mrs. L.M. Lysenko is gratefully acknowledged for translations of the textual materials into English.