The South China Sea Repository and Reference Centre (RRC) is a unit under the Institute Oceanography and Environment (INOS), the national Higher Institution Centre of Excellence (HICoE) in Marine Science at Universiti Malaysia Terengganu (UMT). Established in 2004, formerly known as Biodiversity Museum, before change to current name until now.
RRC followed the international collection management standard; National Park Service (NPS) Museum Management, where four phase of process have been practice; Stabilization, Documentation, Storage and Maintenance. These standards have been practiced since the early establishment of RRC. Each specimen will be preserved properly according to their usage and type. Then data of each specimen (such as measurement, weight, date collected, location collected, collector name, photo and etc) that have been recorded were registered in RRC Database according to their phyla which is easily access and used by researchers and students upon request.
Nowadays, South China Sea Repository and Reference Centre already have more than 45,000 natural marine science specimens registered under university name (UMT XXXX) and divide into four main categories of collection which are Biological Collection, Paleontology Collection, Geology Collection and Archeology Collection. The biggest collection in RRC collection room was animal collection that is divide into two main groups; Vertebrate and Invertebrate specimen. Just to name a few of our RRC holdings, the collections include more than 10,000 marine fishes, 10,000 marine plants and 10,000 marine invertebrates in liquid-filled jars; 10,000 of dry coral skeletons, sea fans and mollusc specimens; 3000 of genomic specimens such as tissue voucher, blood sample and skeleton; and a thousands of geology and archeology specimens.