The science needed to understand highly migratory marine mammal, sea bird, and sea turtle species is not adequately addressed by individual data collections developed for a single region or single time period. These data must be brought together into a common, global map based on a coherent, interoperable, and openly accessible information system. This need was clearly articulated by the National Oceanographic Partnership Program (NOPP) and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation when they co-sponsored a new effort to directly address this issue in 2002. The result is OBIS-SEAMAP: the world data-center for marine mammal, sea bird, and sea turtle information. OBIS-SEAMAP brings together georeferenced distribution, abundance, and telemetry data with tools to query and assess these species in a dynamic and searchable environment. In a second round of NOPP support that began in 2007, the National Science Foundation is helping expand this effort into new technologies and data types. To date, the OBIS-SEAMAP information system includes more than 2.2 million observation records from over 230 data sets spanning 73 years (1935-2008), and growth of this data archive is accelerating. All of these data are provided by a growing international network of individual and institutional data providers.