This shapefile provides a worldwide geographic division by merging the World Continents division proposed by Esri Data and Maps (2024) to the Global Oceans and Seas version 1 division proposed by the Flanders Marine Institute (2021). Though divisions of continents and oceans/seas are available, the combination of both in a single shapefile is scarce.

The Continents and Oceans/Seas shapefile was carefully processed to remove overlaps between the inputs, and to fill gaps (i.e., areas with no information) by spatially joining these gaps to neighbour polygons. In total, the original world continents input divides land areas into 8 categories (Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, Oceania, and South America), while the original oceans/seas input divides the oceans/seas into 10 categories (Arctic Ocean, Baltic Sea, Indian Ocean, Mediterranean Region, North Atlantic Ocean, North Pacific Ocean, South Atlantic Ocean, South China and Easter Archipelagic Seas, South Pacific Ocean, and Southern Ocean). Therefore, the resulting world geographic division has 18 possible categories.

References

Esri Data and Maps (2024). World Continents. Available online at https://hub.arcgis.com/datasets/esri::world-continents/about. Accessed on 05 March 2024.

Flanders Marine Institute (2021). Global Oceans and Seas, version 1. Available online at https://www.marineregions.org/. https://doi.org/10.14284/542. Accessed on 04 March 2024.

The Millennium Coral Reef Mapping Project provides thematic maps of coral reefs worldwide at geomorphological scale. Maps were created by photo-interpretation of Landsat 7 and Landsat 8 satellite images. Maps are provided as standard Shapefiles usable in GIS software. The geomorphological classification scheme is hierarchical and includes 5 levels. The GIS products include for each polygon a number of attributes. The 5 level geomorphological attributes are provided (numerical codes or text). The Level 1 corresponds to the differentiation between oceanic and continental reefs. Then from Levels 2 to 5, the higher the level, the more detailed the thematic classification is. Other binary attributes specify for each polygon if it belongs to terrestrial area (LAND attribute), and sedimentary or hard-bottom reef areas (REEF attribute). Examples and more details on the attributes are provided in the references cited. The products distributed here were created by IRD, in their last version. Shapefiles for 245 atolls of the Pacific Ocean as mapped by the Global coral reef mapping project at geomorphological scale using LANDSAT satellite data (L7 and L8). The data set provides one zip file per country or region of interest. Global coral reef mapping project at geomorphological scale using LANDSAT satellite data (L7 and L8). Funded by National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA grants NAG5-10908 (University of South Florida, PIs: Franck Muller-Karger and Serge Andréfouët) and CARBON-0000-0257 (NASA, PI: Julie Robinson) from 2001 to 2007. Funded by IRD since 2003 (in kind, PI: Serge Andréfouët).

A shapefile of 311 undersea features from all major oceans and seas has been created as an aid for retrieving georeferenced information resources. The geographic extent of the shapefile is 0 degrees E to 0 degrees W longitude and 75 degrees S to 90 degrees N latitude. Many of the undersea features (UF) in the shapefile were selected from a list assembled by Weatherall and Cramer (2008) in a report from the British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) to the General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (GEBCO) Sub-Committee on Undersea Feature Names (SCUFN). Annex II of the Weatherall and Cramer report (p. 20-22) lists 183 undersea features that "may need additional points to define their shape" and includes online links to additional BODC documents providing coordinate pairs sufficient to define detailed linestrings for these features. For the first phase of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) project, Wingfield created polygons for 87 of the undersea features on the BODC list, using the linestrings as guides; the selected features were primarily ridges, rises, trenches, fracture zones, basins, and seamount chains. In the second phase of the USGS project, Wingfield and Hartwell created polygons for an additional 224 undersea features, mostly basins, abyssal plains, and fracture zones. Because USGS is a Federal agency, the attribute tables follow the conventions of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) GEOnet Names Server (http://earth-info.nga.mil/gns/html).

Ferromanganese crusts in the world's oceans may serve as potential sources of metals, such as cobalt and magnesium, valuable to civilian and military industry; these are metals that the United States would otherwise be dependent on foreign sources. Unlike abyssal ferromanganese nodules, which form in areas of low disturbance and high sediment accumulation, ferromanganese crusts have been found to contain three to five times more cobalt than abyssal ferromanganese nodules and can be found on harder, steeper substrates than abyssal plains, which can be too steep for permanent sediment accumulation. Ferromanganese crusts have also been documented on seamounts and plateaus within the U.S. exclusive economic zone in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans and are therefore of strategic importance to the United States Government as well as to civilian mining and metallurgical industries. A database containing ferromanganese crust occurrences throughout the world's oceans was assembled from published and unpublished sources to provide data gathering and analytical information for these samples. These data provide the digital formatted locations of the sample locations of the U.S. Geological Survey and Scripps Institution Nodule Data Bank (SNDB) from appendixes A and B. These locations from 1986 and earlier are also represented on the maps of Lane and others (1986). > Lane, C.M., Manheim, F.T., Hathaway, J.C., and Ling, T.H., 1986, Station maps of the world ocean-ferromanganese-rust database: U.S. Geological Survey Miscellaneous Field Studies Map, 1869, http://pubs.usgs.gov/mf/1986/1869/

Dataset includes various regional-scale spatial data layers in geojson format.

OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a free, editable map & spatial database of the whole world. This dataset is an extract of OpenStreetMap data for 21 Pacific Island Countries, in a GIS-friendly format. The OSM data has been split into separate layers based on themes (buildings, roads, points of interest, etc), and it comes bundled with a QGIS project and styles, to help you get started with using the data in your maps. This OSM product will be updated weekly and contains data for Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Republic of the Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, French Polynesia, Wallis and Futuna, Tokelau, American Samoa as well as data on the Pacific region. The goal is to increase awareness among Pacific GIS users of the richness of OpenStreetMap data in Pacific countries, as well as the gaps, so that they can take advantage of this free resource, become interested in contributing to OSM, and perhaps join the global OSM community.

This coverage displays the geographic range of select Pacific Ocean fish species.

This data set was acquired with a ship-based Navigation system during Eltanin expedition ELT25 conducted in 1966 (Chief Scientist: Dr. Albert P. Crary). These data files are of Shapefile format and include Navigation data and were processed after data collection.

Locations and outlines of the islands of Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia. Methods are fully described in the following open access paper: Etherington TR, Dawson M, Sutherland A, McCarthy J 2025. Open data for biogeography research of the genus Metrosideros across the south-central Pacific region. Pacific Conservation Biology 31(2): PC24075. https://doi.org/10.1071/PC24075

This coverage displays the geographic range of select Pacific Ocean fish species.

This coverage displays the geographic range of select Pacific Ocean fish species.

Two 21-day field operations were conducted in 1997 and 1998 in the estuaries and on the inner continental shelf off the northern Oregon and southern Washington coast. These cruises aboard the R/V Corliss were run in order to generate reconnaissance maps of the seafloor geology and the shallow subsurface stratigraphy using sidescan-sonar and seismic-reflection mapping techniques. The 1998 cruise also collected sediment grab samples, bottom photographs, and video images to verify the sidescan-sonar imagery and to document the seafloor geology. The combination of these data with previously collected sediment sample data (Robert, 1974; Nittrouer, 1978; and Smith et. al., 1980) has been used to define the extent and lithology of shelf sediments associated with the Columbia River littoral cell. This work is one component of a larger project studying the erosion of the Washington Oregon coasts and is being coordinated by the U.S. Geological Survey and the Washington State Department of Ecology. The reasons for collecting these data are to provide a regional synthesis of the offshore geology for this project and to support a wide variety of management decisions and to provide a basis for further process-oriented investigations.

This coverage displays the geographic range of select Pacific Ocean fish species.

This data set was acquired with a ship-based Navigation system during Melville expedition VANC33MV conducted in 2004 (Chief Scientist: Dr. Jim Swift). These data files are of Shapefile format and include Navigation data and were processed after data collection. Funding was provided by NSF grant(s): OCE02-23869.

In 1989, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) began a major geologic and oceanographic investigation of the Gulf of the Farallones continental shelf system, designed to evaluate and monitor human impacts on the marine environment (Karl and others, 2002). The study region is located off the central California coast, adjacent to San Francisco Bay and encompasses the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary. Geologic mapping of this area included the use of various remote sensing and sampling techniques such as sub-bottom profiling, sidescan-sonar and bathymetric mapping, gravity core and grab sampling, and photography. These data were used to define the surficial sediment distribution, underlying structure and sea floor morphology of the study area. The primary focus of this report is to present a georeferenced, digital sidescan-sonar mosaic of the study region. The sidescan-sonar data were acquired with the AMS-120 (120kHz) sidescan-sonar system during USGS cruise F9-89-NC. The dataset covers approximately 1000 km squared of the continental shelf between Point Reyes, California and Half Moon Bay, California, extending west to the continental shelf break near the Farallon Islands. The sidescan-sonar mosaic displays a heterogenous sea-floor environment, containing outcropping rock, ripples, dunes, lineations and depressions, as well as flat, featureless sea floor (Karl and others, 2002). These data, along with sub-bottom interpretation and ground truth data define the geologic framework of the region. The sidescan-sonar mosaic can be used with supplemental remote sensing and sampling data as a base for future research, helping to define the local current regime and predominant sediment transport directions and forcing conditions within the Gulf of Farallones.

This data set was acquired with a ship-based Navigation system during Roger Revelle expedition LPRS04RR conducted in 2002 (Chief Scientist: Dr. Stephen P. Miller). These data files are of Shapefile format and include Navigation data and were processed after data collection.

The TIGER/Line shapefiles and related database files (.dbf) are an extract of selected geographic and cartographic information from the U.S. Census Bureau's Master Address File / Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing (MAF/TIGER) Database (MTDB). The MTDB represents a seamless national filewith no overlaps or gaps between parts, however, each TIGER/Line File is designed to stand alone as an independent dataset, or they can be combined to cover the entire nation. The Area Hydrography Shapefile contains the geometry and attributes of both perennial and intermittent area hydrography features, including ponds, lakes, oceans, swamps (up to the U.S. nautical three-mile limit), glaciers, and the area covered by large rivers, streams, and/or canals that are represented as double-line drainage. Single-line drainage water features can be found in the Linear Hydrography Shapefile (LINEARWATER.shp). Linear water features includes single-line drainage water features and artificial path features, where they exist, that run through double-line drainage features such as rivers, streams, and/or canals, and serve as a linear representation of these features.

Ferromanganese crusts in the world's oceans may serve as potential sources of metals, such as cobalt and magnesium, valuable to civilian and military industry; these are metals that the United States would otherwise be dependent on foreign sources. Unlike abyssal ferromanganese nodules, which form in areas of low disturbance and high sediment accumulation, ferromanganese crusts have been found to contain three to five times more cobalt than abyssal ferromanganese nodules and can be found on harder, steeper substrates than abyssal plains, which can be too steep for permanent sediment accumulation. Ferromanganese crusts have also been documented on seamounts and plateaus within the U.S. exclusive economic zone in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans and are therefore of strategic importance to the United States Government as well as to civilian mining and metallurgical industries. A database containing ferromanganese crust occurrences throughout the world's oceans was assembled from published and unpublished sources to provide data gathering and analytical information for these samples. These data provide the digital formatted locations of the sample locations of the U.S. Geological Survey and Scripps Institution Nodule Data Bank (SNDB) from appendixes A and B. These locations from 1986 and earlier are also represented on the maps of Lane and others (1986). > Manheim, F.T., Lane-Bostwick, C.M., 1989, Chemical composition of ferromanganese crusts in the world ocean: A review and comprehensive database: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 89-020, http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/1989/0020/

This data set was acquired with a ship-based Navigation system during Marcus G. Langseth expedition MGL0901 conducted in 2009 (Chief Scientist: Dr. Anthony Johnson). These data files are of Shapefile format and include Navigation data and were processed after data collection. Data were acquired while the Marcus G. Langseth was in transit.

This data set contains the Submerged Lands Act (SLA)boundary line (also known as the State Seaward Boundary (SSB) and Fed State Boundary) for the BOEM Pacific Region in ESRI ArcGIS shape file format. The SLA defines the seaward limit of a state owned submerged lands and the landward boundary of federally managed Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) lands. In the BOEM Pacific Region the SLA is projected 3 nautical miles offshore from the coastal baseline. Further information on the SLA and development of this line from baseline points can be found in OCS Report BOEM 99-0006: Boundary Development on the Outer Continental Shelf. The SLA boundary was developed using nautical charts, topographic maps, and hydrographic surveys to identify coastal baseline points. For California, there was a wide range of map scales used (1:200 – 1:100,000). The Minerals Management Service (MMS - the predecessor bureau to BOEM) used mapping software that was developed in-house to mathematically project the SLA boundary 3 nautical miles seaward from the baseline. For purposes of the SLA, all coordinates are assumed as absolute values with a precision of three decimals of a meter. For purposes other than the SLA, the actual positional precision for a scale of 1:40,000 is approximately 23 meters. In 1992, MMS adopted NADCON v.2.00 or better as the bureau standard horizontal datum transformation software, and reiterated that, for its purposes, “the World Geodetic System of 1984 (WGS 84) is considered equivalent to NAD 83 offshore of Alaska and the conterminous United States.” 57 Fed. Reg. 5168 (February 12, 1992). On December 24, 2014, the SLA boundary offshore of California was fixed (permanently immobilized) by a decree issued by the U.S. Supreme Court. United States v. California, 135 S. Ct. 563 (2014). For a detailed discussion on the fixing of the SLA boundary for California, please see http://www.boem.gov/Oil-and-Gas-Energy-Program/Mapping-and-Data/Multi-Purpose-Marine-Cadastre-Map-Viewer/Court-Decisions.aspx Because GIS projection and topology functions can change or generalize coordinates, these GIS shape files are NOT an OFFICIAL record for the exact Submerged Lands Act Boundary.The official record is reflected through the coordinates listed in the decree, and the boundary shown on the BOEM Supplemental Official Block Diagrams, which are available at http://www.boem.gov/Oil-and-Gas-Energy-Program/Mapping-and-Data/Pacific.aspx