DRAFT,  v2.5 3 OceanUS has held its first IOOS Implementation conference but the initial Development Plan is  not finalized, hence the national backbone is not yet defined;    RA formation has been initiated around the country but none yet exist;   An ORION program office has been funded but there has been no call for proposals for  infrastructure. SEACOOS, initiated in 2002, has begun to define how a regional coastal ocean observing system,  or RCOOS, associated with each RA, might best be developed.  In an effort to help initiate an    open dialogue on how best to create RCOOSs in the US we here present our view of how this  should be accomplished.    We recognize that the regional coastal ocean observing system (RCOOS) for the Southeast has yet  to be formally organized.  Though SEACOOS views itself as a pilot program to help define the SE  RCOOS, we recognize that it can not be assumed that SEACOOS will become the RCOOS.  It    may be most appropriate for SEACOOS to consider itself as a candidate R&D branch of the SE  RCOOS; how the operational needs of the RCOOS will be met is as yet largely unresolved.   Nevertheless we here put forward our vision of how the SE RCOOS should begin. I. General principles This Implementation Plan defines guidelines for the development and staged implementation of SEACOOS.  It builds on the SEACOOS Strategic Plan, which summarizes the vision and mission  for the program and describes its functional subsystems (observing, modeling, information  management, and outreach and education).   A central theme of the Implementation Plan is that      the transition of various SEACOOS observing and modeling efforts into the pilot and pre- operational programs of a regional system should follow a process in which the design and purpose  are scientifically defensible and in which the subsystems act in a coordinated fashion.  This  Implementation Plan seeks to prioritize tasks and develop a timeline for the system build-out to   2012 (10 years from the beginning of the program).    To promote readability a number of the Implementation Plan concepts are presented as   appendices. These include a discussion of regional coastal ocean observing system (RCOOS)  design (Appendix 1) and the roles of various sectors (academic, private, and government) in  creating and maintaining a RCOOS (Appendix 2).  A generic development process is presented in  Appendix 3, and our philosophy of prioritization is given in Appendix 4. It is important to acknowledge that development of a RCOOS must be coordinated with larger  scale national and international oceanographic efforts (IOOS, GOOS/GEOS and ORION), with  subregional and local programs, and with governance and user engagement activities in the SE  region.  The latter are being coordinated by the Southeast Coastal Ocean Observations Regional  Association (SECOORA), a program intended to guide the formation of a Regional Association  that is ultimately certified by OceanUS.  The observing system priorities in the Southeast US will  ultimately be identified by SECOORA through engagement of potential users of the information.