Beginning in 1987 in response to a HAB outbreak along the coast of North Carolina NOAA CoastWatch has routinely provided near real-time high resolution ocean satellite products from NOAA polar orbiting satellites to governmental users. Since that time the program has expanded to include all classes of users and to cover all 50 states with data from NOAA polar and geostationary satellites, TMI, DMSP, QuikSAT, SeaWiFS, ADEOS 2 and NASA’s Earth Observing System (EOS). Since 1987 registered users have expanded from hundreds to over 14,000. Data volumes processed and distributed approximate 9 TB per year. A regional network of 7 CoastWatch Regional Nodes co-located at NOAA laboratories in the conterminous states, Alaska and Hawai’i provide quality assurance and interpretation. In 2003 NOAA began a gradual expansion from CoastWatch to OceanWatch by starting a step-wise broadening of operational ocean satellite coverage of the world ocean. It’s estimated that by 2008 operational high resolution, near real-time ocean satellite coverage of the global ocean will be available to all users from NOAA OceanWatch. CoastWatch can be accessed at http://coastwatch.noaa.gov.