Gulf sturgeon Critical Habitat Units 8-14

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The base shoreline data set used in this process was the Coastal Assessment Framework shapefile from NOAA/NOS/SPO. Additional reference data sets included Mr SID CIR Imagery of the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway from www.atlas.lsu.edu, TIGER Line shapefiles of roads in Louisiana and Florida from www.geographynetwork.com and road and railroad shapefiles in Mississippi from MARIS. Maptech's Digital Chart Kit, Regions 8 and 17 featuring NOAA Digital Charts and a text description of the 72 COLREGS Demarcation lines from www.navcen.uscg.gov/mwv/regulations/33CFR080/33CFR80_GCD08.htm were also used. These additional layers were used to designate boundaries on individual units as dictated by the critical habitat designations described in the Federal Register Document.Inland units were created by digitizing a polygon slightly larger than the water body it represented. The new polygons were then "edit clipped" to the shoreline to exactly match the shoreline. In areas where the entire water body was not included, the boundaries were drawn following the feature described in Federal Register document. (Ex. The Lake Pontchartrain Causeway was digitized from the Mr SID's and used as the western boundary of the polygon. Bays with adjacent rivers or bayous that were excluded had their boundaries created by drawing a straight line across the river's mouth as dictated by the Document.) Every effort was made to exclude features at locations consistent with the descriptions in the Document.Near shore units were created by creating a 1 nautical mile buffer of the coastline (9nm in the case of the Suwannee Sound) or barrier island as indicated by the Document. The seaward side of these buffers was used as the southern boundary of the units. For the passes between islands, line segments were digitized to represent the 72 COLREGS Demarcation lines and 1 nautical mile buffers were created from those lines. Those buffers were merged with the buffers of the islands to complete the southern boundaries of the units. Every effort was made to accurately follow the descriptions of the 72 COLREGS lines. Whenever coordinates were used in the description, those coordinates were used in the creation of the buffers. When no coordinates were given, the lines/buffers were created by following the descriptions in the text.The Maptech software was used primarily as a guide to locate areas by name. The digital charts were also useful for accuracy evaluation in placement of the 72 COLREGS lines, as they were visible on the charts and could be compared to the lines digitized from text descriptions.