Defacto Marine Protected Areas of the United States

These data provide the spatial boundaries of DeFacto Marine Protected Areas in U.S. Waters. With nearly 1200 sites (for which GIS data are available), DFMPAs cover 3% of the U.S. waters, (0-200 nautical miles offshore), which includes the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), Territorial Sea, and state waters. DFMPAs range in size from less than one acre to more than 40,000 km2, though the vast majority is at the smaller end of this spectrum. Most of the small sites were created to provide places for vessels to anchor safely. Most of the large sites provide dedicated training and operation areas for various branches of the U.S. military, or facilitate the transfer of oil and gas to moored tanker vessels.

As a first step towards creating a national system, the National Marine Protected Areas Center (MPA Center) is synthesizing information on all existing place-based marine spatial management efforts in the country, including those that were not implemented specifically for conservation purposes. This report gives the first nation-wide view of the number, size, type, and purpose of DFMPAs in the United States. It answers the question, How many DFMPAs exist in the United States, and how are they currently being used?

1505

Marine areas that are set aside for reasons other than conservation, such as economic, human health or safety, and protection of government or private property are called de facto MPAs (DFMPAs). These are places where activities are restricted by law for reasons other than conservation or natural resource management. Familiar examples include: safety, security, and danger zones, restricted areas, prohibited lightering areas, some anchorage grounds, and traffic separation schemes.

The MPA Center shall not be held liable for improper or incorrect use of the data described and/or contained in this database. These data and related graphics are not legal documents and are not intended to be used as such.The information contained in these data is dynamic and may change over time. The data are not better than the original sources from which they were derived. It is the responsibility of the data user to use the data appropriately and within the limitations of geospatial data in general, and these data in particular.

These data are publicly accessible and downloadable via http://www.mpa.gov

The data are not to be used for navigation.

Microsoft Windows XP Version 5.1 (Build 2600) Service Pack 3; ESRI ArcCatalog 9.3.1.3500

The inventory is complete as of June 2008.

Inventory data were collected from various sources at various spatial scales. The datasets collected were not resampled and are presented in their original form as provided from the contributing agencies, with the exception for a variety of sites that were drawn from coordinates provided by governing agencies.