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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.

    RegionsTranslation 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
    DescriptEEZPart EU
    Ionian SeasLibyan Exclusive Economic Zone0
    Maltese Exclusive Economic Zone1
    Grecian Exclusive Economic Zone1
    Albanian Exclusive Economic Zone0
    Italian Exclusive Economic Zone1
    Baltic SeaLatvian Exclusive Economic Zone1
    Estonian Exclusive Economic Zone1
    Finnish Exclusive Economic Zone1
    Lithuanian Exclusive Economic Zone1
    Swedish Exclusive Economic Zone1
    Polish Exclusive Economic Zone1
    Russian Exclusive Economic Zone0
    Bornholm Exclusive Economic Zone1
    German Exclusive Economic Zone1
    Danish Exclusive Economic Zone1
    Black SeaBulgarian Exclusive Economic Zone1
    Georgian Exclusive Economic Zone0
    Russian Exclusive Economic Zone0
    Romanian Exclusive Economic Zone1
    Ukrainian Exclusive Economic Zone0
    Turkish Exclusive Economic Zone2
    Celtic SeasFaeroe Islands Exclusive Economic Zone0
    French Exclusive Economic Zone1
    Irish Exclusive Economic Zone1
    United Kingdom Exclusive Economic Zone1
    Jersey Exclusive Economic Zone0
    Guernsey Exclusive Economic Zone0
    North SeaFaeroe Islands Exclusive Economic Zone0
    Dutch Exclusive Economic Zone1
    Norwegian Exclusive Economic Zone0
    French Exclusive Economic Zone1
    United Kingdom Exclusive Economic Zone1
    Swedish Exclusive Economic Zone1
    Belgian Exclusive Economic Zone1
    German Exclusive Economic Zone1
    Danish Exclusive Economic Zone1
    South European Atlantic ShelfFrench Exclusive Economic Zone1
    United Kingdom Exclusive Economic Zone1
    Portuguese Exclusive Economic Zone1
    Spanish Exclusive Economic Zone1
    Western Mediterranean SeaItalian Exclusive Economic Zone1
    French Exclusive Economic Zone1
    Spanish Exclusive Economic Zone1
    Monégasque Exclusive Economic Zone0
    Gibraltarian Exclusive Economic Zone1
    Algerian Exclusive Economic Zone0
    Moroccan Exclusive Economic Zone0