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Maritime Forum

Sea-basin boundaries for ur-EMODNET

Date: Tuesday 08 September 2009
From: Simon Claus, Francisco Hernandez (Flanders Marine Institute, VLIZ)
To: Dick Schaap, All EMODNET partners
Subject: Geographic Delimitations sea areas EMODNET Preparatory Actions
Intro: Attached an overview of the communications within the EMODNET Preparatory Actions regarding the delimitations of sea areas and a proposal on the sea delimitations to use.

Communications on Sea Regions:

  1. During the EMODNET Kick-Off Meeting, 5th June 2009 following point was made: Map regions. Although not very precise, the descriptions of the sea regions and sea-subregions provided in the technical specifications are sufficient for now. VLIZ will make available their shape files of the IHO regions to the consortia. It may be that an operational EMODNET will subdivide the regions differently.
  2. At the Biological Kick-Off Meeting, Neil Holdsworth, ICES mentioned ICES is currently working on a new delimitation which will be used in the framework of the MSFD. The MSFD Marine Regions will be largely based on the ICES Ecoregions. It might be wise for EMODNET to adopt the MSFD limitations once they are agreed.
  3. In a communication from 14 July from Andy Cameron from JNCC (Habitats) was not in favour of using the IHO sea areas, they also proposed to use in the absence of an agreed MSFD Marine regions the ICES Ecoregions:
  4. “The coverage of the IHO sea boundaries are not very helpful, and potentially restrictive. It seems common sense to fill the gaps within the Mediterranean basin and the Baltic Sea subdivisions like Skaggerak and Gulf of Bothnia, but the issue of the western boundaries in north-west Europe of the EMODNET lots perhaps needs a little more careful attention. Using IHO boundaries would require, in areas to the west of Ireland and Scotland, for example, subdivision of the IHO ‘North Atlantic Ocean’ area which would recommend the use of other pre-existing boundaries anyway.

      The tender specification does define the western boundary in the North East Atlantic Ocean basin, as “the edge of the exclusive economic zone of EU Member States or the edge of the continental shelf; whichever is the further west”. In the absence of MSFD agreed boundaries at this time, we suggest the adoption of ICES ecoregions as better regional divisions, with only the western Continental shelf limits for UK and Ireland then needed to modify the extent with respect to the Celtic Seas. These ecoregions are likely to inform the MSFD boundaries once agreed and in addition cover the obvious interpretation of the regions described in the tender specification. We want to bring this to your attention at this stage, not only since the outputs of the Hydrographic and Geological EMODNET lots are of particular importance to the EUSeaMap project, but also to avoid potential difficulties further along the line with respect to the expected general outputs of the EMODNET contracts in relation to MSFD needs”

    Conclusion + proposal

    We propose therefore to use for now the ICES Ecoregions but also implement a second baseline layer with EEZs.

    1. This will facilitate a future integration with the MSFD Marine Regions
    2. It is preferable to use the ICES Ecoregions because IHO does not delimit the Western Irish Sea separately.
    3. We propose also to make use of the EEZs as a second background layer. We are in favour of this option due the national character of different data collection & monitoring activities.

    Regions Translation EMODNET Regions - ICES Ecoregions

    1. An overview of all the ICES Ecoregions can be downloaded from here
    2. The EMODNET Regions can then be translated into following ICES Ecoregions:

    For all Lots
    North Sea
    North Sea
    Lot 1 (hydrographic)
    ICES Ecoregion
    Celtic Sea
    Western Med
    Adriatic-Ionian – Central Med
    the project should also cover

    the Celtic Seas Western Mediterranean and the
    Ionian-Central Mediterranean
    !! The current ICES Ecoregion ‘Adriatic-Ionian’ does not differentiate between the Ionian and Adriatic Sea. Therefore we eliminated the Adriatic Sea from the Ices-Ecoregion ‘Adriatic-Ionian’. This updated ICES Ecoregion version can be downloaded from
    here

    Remark: it must be noted that the EMODNET Hydrographic Lot contractually is not covering the Adriatic Sea, but follows the boundaries as indicated in the zip file.

    Lot 2 (geological)
    Celtic Sea
    Baltic Sea
    the project should also cover the
    Balticand
    Celtic Seas
    Lot 3 (chemical)
    Black Sea
    the project should also cover the
    Black Sea
    Lot 4 (biological)
    South European Atlantic Shelf
    the project should also cover the Bay of Biscay and the Iberian Coast

    translation EMODNET Regions – Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ)

    1. An overview of all the EEZs can be downloaded from here
    2. The EMODNET Regions can then be translated into following EEZs
    Descript EEZ Part EU
    Ionian Seas Libyan Exclusive Economic Zone 0
    Maltese Exclusive Economic Zone 1
    Grecian Exclusive Economic Zone 1
    Albanian Exclusive Economic Zone 0
    Italian Exclusive Economic Zone 1
    Baltic Sea Latvian Exclusive Economic Zone 1
    Estonian Exclusive Economic Zone 1
    Finnish Exclusive Economic Zone 1
    Lithuanian Exclusive Economic Zone 1
    Swedish Exclusive Economic Zone 1
    Polish Exclusive Economic Zone 1
    Russian Exclusive Economic Zone 0
    Bornholm Exclusive Economic Zone 1
    German Exclusive Economic Zone 1
    Danish Exclusive Economic Zone 1
    Black Sea Bulgarian Exclusive Economic Zone 1
    Georgian Exclusive Economic Zone 0
    Russian Exclusive Economic Zone 0
    Romanian Exclusive Economic Zone 1
    Ukrainian Exclusive Economic Zone 0
    Turkish Exclusive Economic Zone 2
    Celtic Seas Faeroe Islands Exclusive Economic Zone 0
    French Exclusive Economic Zone 1
    Irish Exclusive Economic Zone 1
    United Kingdom Exclusive Economic Zone 1
    Jersey Exclusive Economic Zone 0
    Guernsey Exclusive Economic Zone 0
    North Sea Faeroe Islands Exclusive Economic Zone 0
    Dutch Exclusive Economic Zone 1
    Norwegian Exclusive Economic Zone 0
    French Exclusive Economic Zone 1
    United Kingdom Exclusive Economic Zone 1
    Swedish Exclusive Economic Zone 1
    Belgian Exclusive Economic Zone 1
    German Exclusive Economic Zone 1
    Danish Exclusive Economic Zone 1
    South European Atlantic Shelf French Exclusive Economic Zone 1
    United Kingdom Exclusive Economic Zone 1
    Portuguese Exclusive Economic Zone 1
    Spanish Exclusive Economic Zone 1
    Western Mediterranean Sea Italian Exclusive Economic Zone 1
    French Exclusive Economic Zone 1
    Spanish Exclusive Economic Zone 1
    Monégasque Exclusive Economic Zone 0
    Gibraltarian Exclusive Economic Zone 1
    Algerian Exclusive Economic Zone 0
    Moroccan Exclusive Economic Zone 0