Dear colleagues, The first high coverage genome sequences of marine mammal species are now publicly available: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bioproject/170427 This data has been generated at significant cost and effort by a collaboration between the University of Copenhagen and Baylor College for Medicine. The decision to make the data public prior to publication was based on the lack of a high quality reference genome that would aid other genomic studies, for example by providing a mapping reference for RADseq data. This is in keeping with principles set out in the Toronto, Bermuda and Ft. Lauderdale meetings/reports: http://www.genome.gov/pages/research/wellcomereport0303.pdf We hope that resource users will also respect and follow these principles and would contact us before publishing any large-scale analyses of the data, so that we can coordinate with our own publication of the data we have generated. Andrew Foote