Over the life of the NERP TE program each project is required to complete a metadata describing the project itself and metadata records describing each of the dataset produced by the project.

This guide describes the creation and supplying of metadata describing just the project itself (referred to as the 'project metadata record') and not the datasets produced by this project; these will come later as each dataset is developed. These subsequent dataset records will be attached and linked to the project metadata record being described here.

In July 1989 the Australian Government funded a four year environmental study of the Torres Strait marine environment. This study, the Torres Strait Baseline Study, was instigated in response to concerns expressed by Torres Strait Islanders, commercial fishermen and scientists about possible effects on the marine environment of the Torres Strait from mining operations in the Fly River catchment area of Papua New Guinea.

This article is a collection of publications and data associated with this study.

This milestone report presents a catalogue of information for the most significant and updated data sets, metadata and map compositions for the Torres Strait region, which may be suitable for inclusion in the Torres Strait eAtlas. The datasets included in this catalogue are described more fully in three previous reports. Pitcher et al 2004 collated all CSIRO seabed survey datasets prior to 2004 and integrated them to a common level of seabed habitat classification. Those datasets providing the broadest coverage of Torres Strait are included here.