About SeaSources
A Little History
SeaSources was originally founded for the purpose of providing an affordable alternative to the outrageous cost of exam preparation for mariners sitting for their first license or document as well as professionals seeking to upgrade. As I remembered studying for my first exam back in 1979 I thought of the stack of floppy discs that I had paid a ridiculous amount of money for and they cancelled themselves out after you had taken X amount of quizzes on them which rendered them useless for review later on. Their had to be a better way.
When I first started this project the database of questions was only available in document format. All of the original questions and answers were manually copied and pasted from a word document format into an excel spreadsheet which, as you can imagine, with 28,000 give or take questions, it was quite an undertaking. Then, after learning Visual Basic programming, I was able to write a program that the DB was plugged into and made available on CD. It soon became apparent that keeping up with the new questions from the Coast Guard as they came out was going to be very difficult as far as updating the CD’s which had been purchased. Thus the concept of the online study was born.
With the help of an excellent programmer and an updated database we proceeded to make the questions available to anyone for free, talk about affordable, who could access the web and do it in a format that was easy to use as well as being able to plug new questions into as soon as they were available. With the development of the TesTTaker software , many thanks to my good friend Jaime, we have been able to offer not only the online tests but still give our members the ability to install them locally to their computer, if they should choose, and get the new questions updated as they come out. This has proved to be a much more efficient system.
We are currently being accessed by several of the major maritime academies as a supplement to their exam prep on a regular basis as well as being frequently recommended by Regional Exam Centers as an excellent resource for study.
The online testing went live in February of 2000 and has gone through many improvements since then and we have many more to come.
Thank you to more than 80,000 registered SeaSources online users, from the old online study and the new, for their help and suggestions since I started this project almost 25 years ago. And thanks for spreading the word about us as this is how many of our new members come here to study for their License.
For new users of SeaSources online study, just click on Enter Online Study Room above and go to Register, fill out the registration information accurately, enter a valid email address which will be your username, and choose a password that is 5 to 16 characters long. Remember that the password is case sensitive and this will be your final password to log in with. No other passwords will be emailed to you. Once you have created the account you will then check your email inbox for a validation email to confirm the account. If you do not see the validation email please check to make sure it did not go to your spam folder. Clicking on the validation link will take you back to the log in page. The registration information is necessary for the score keeping and progress reports, which are now available in the new test site, and allow registered members to see a history of their scores and progress on all previous quizzes taken. After you are in the system you can alter your personal information and password. All personal information and e-mail addresses are kept strictly confidential and are not given out to mailing lists nor do we use addresses to bombard you with useless Spam.
Our database is being edited and updated frequently as well as more subjects and illustrations added to make this site a reliable source of information for all members to use as a supplement to there exam preparation study or general knowledge. Many new references have been added to the database that are excerpts from the material needed to solve specific questions. Rules of the Road and Aids to Navigation are good examples of this. One of our goals is to eventually have a solution or reference illustration to each question. This is what makes this service unique. Anyone who would like to participate by submitting illustrations or solutions to be attached to questions are welcome to do so. Just ask for details on how to submit them. Mariners working together can make this site one of the most powerful tools on the web for fellow mariners. Group participation is highly encouraged! Get involved.
Join the thousands of members who have successfully and affordably prepared for their Coast Guard Exam with SeaSources.net. When using the service we recommend using either Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome Listed in the column to the left are the subjects covered as they appear in the online study. If you arrived on this page by doing an internet search on this subject then you need to proceed to the Enter Online Testing Site link above and Register to create an account and get the full benefits of using this site. The latest multiple choice questions on this topic can be downloaded and installed to your computer by creating an account in the online study and installing the latest version of the “TesTTaker Software”.
If you are currently a user of the New Online Study, any downloads and purchases made through your old online study account can be rolled over to the new software based on the New Online Study Database.
Note: You will not receive a recorded score to your history for each quiz unless you complete the quiz.
Note: If your personal user account is being accessed by multiple users it would be more to their advantage to create their own account in order to receive the benefits of having their own personal score history attached to the quizzes they take.
Note: Any discrepancies that a user may find, as in answers that they believe are disputable, should be reported so that corrections can be researched and entered. Simply click on the “Bug” icon while taking a test.
Over 1,500,000 quizzes have been taken between the old and the new online study.
Thank you for your support.
Steve and Jaime
SeaSources Developers