GEOMAR - Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel
Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum, Frankfurt/M
Greenland Institute of Natural Resources
Spatial layers supporting the revised nomination proforma for the North Atlantic Current and Evlanov Sea basin Marine Protected Area
Data Publisher for Earth & Environmental Science
This dataset is a compilation of spatial layers and scientific data underpinning the 2022-23 revision of the nomination proforma for the "North Atlantic Current and Evlanov Sea basin" (NACES) marine protected area (MPA) in the OSPAR Maritime Area (Region V, Wider Atlantic). An analysis of seabird tracking data by BirdLife International led to identification and subsequent designation of the site in 2021. The seafloor was not included as part of this designation, but a two-year process was agreed to review the available evidence with the aim to expand the conservation objectives of the site to encompass the seafloor. This review process included compiling new data available from many sources including those collected during the European Union iAtlantic project (2019-2024) to expand the underlying evidence base. This led to the compilation of both existing and newly collected datasets on geodiversity and oceanography, as well as benthic and pelagic biology. This new compilation reaffirms the importance of the NACES area, for example as a significant Atlantic frontal zone with high mesoscale activity and high potential for upwards and downwards bentho-pelagic coupling. This in turn is illustrated by a diverse benthic marine invertebrate fauna, with some species at the northernmost extent of their geographical ranges. The complex oceanography of the region helps explain its productivity, supporting a hotspot for mesopelagic fish and the seabirds and other higher trophic taxa that feed upon them. This collaborative effort led to an amendment of OSPAR Decision 2021/01 and the expansion of conservation objectives from the initial focus on seabirds and the ecosystems and processes that support them to include a broader suite of species and habitats, including the seafloor and subsoil thereof, and the associated ecosystems, and their processes and functions. […]
This dataset is a compilation of spatial layers and scientific data underpinning the 2022-23 revision of the nomination proforma for the "North Atlantic Current and Evlanov Sea basin" (NACES) marine protected area (MPA) in the OSPAR Maritime Area (Region V, Wider Atlantic). An analysis of seabird tracking data by BirdLife International led to identification and subsequent designation of the site in 2021. The seafloor was not included as part of this designation, but a two-year process was agreed to review the available evidence with the aim to expand the conservation objectives of the site to encompass the seafloor. This review process included compiling new data available from many sources including those collected during the European Union iAtlantic project (2019-2024) to expand the underlying evidence base. This led to the compilation of both existing and newly collected datasets on geodiversity and oceanography, as well as benthic and pelagic biology. This new compilation reaffirms the importance of the NACES area, for example as a significant Atlantic frontal zone with high mesoscale activity and high potential for upwards and downwards bentho-pelagic coupling. This in turn is illustrated by a diverse benthic marine invertebrate fauna, with some species at the northernmost extent of their geographical ranges. The complex oceanography of the region helps explain its productivity, supporting a hotspot for mesopelagic fish and the seabirds and other higher trophic taxa that feed upon them. This collaborative effort led to an amendment of OSPAR Decision 2021/01 and the expansion of conservation objectives from the initial focus on seabirds and the ecosystems and processes that support them to include a broader suite of species and habitats, including the seafloor and subsoil thereof, and the associated ecosystems, and their processes and functions. This geodatabase includes multiple layers relating to local and regional boundaries. These include the boundary of the NACES MPA, Milne Seamount Complex MPA, and wider OSPAR MPA network, as well as the Mid-North-Atlantic Frontal Zone Ecologically or Biologically Significant marine Area and Important Bird and Biodiversity Area. The OSPAR Commission 2023 amended the delineation of the NACES MPA boundary based on the addendum submitted by the Portuguese Republic in 2017 to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf regarding the establishment of the outer limits of the Portuguese continental shelf. This change was not retroactively implemented in the revised nomination proforma, however a layer for the proposed extended shelf boundary has been included here. This database also compiles multiple published and previously unpublished layers based on a mixture of modelled and ground-truthed data. The geodiversity layers include features such as abyssal plains, ridges and seamounts, as well as multibeam data from the iAtlantic "IceDivA2" cruise (2021), which includes detailed bathymetry of the Mount Doom seamount that was discovered during the expedition. The unique oceanography and global climatology of the region can be visualised from layers on percentage of eddy coverage and mean bottom eddy kinetic energy as well as chlorophyll a concentration. The biology of the region can be explored in the OBIS species diversity layer, seabird stopovers and wintering areas, whale movements including sightings from the DY080 cruise (2017), bluefin tuna corridors, mesopelagic fish catches, modelled habitat suitability for black and scleractinian corals, and cephalopod, zooplankton and phytoplankton sample stations. The anthropogenic activities of the area can be mapped in the form of oil and gas well sites, shipping lanes, and Global Fishing Watch apparent fisheries effort activity data (excluding bottom trawling activity). In total the dataset includes 64 layers from over 40 sources, available as either an ESRI shapefile (.shp), GeoTIFF (.tif), Geodatabase (.gdb), Gridded data (.grd) or netCDF (.nc). An explanatory text (.txt) has been provided along with layers where further description on the contents or use of the layer is needed. The layers are ordered based on boundaries (1-8), geodiversity (9-24), oceanography and global climatology (25-31), biology (32-57) and anthropogenic activities (58-64). Where possible, attribute tables contain further information related to the spatial layer such as species name, fauna counts, eddy characteristics, and so on. This dataset was created using QGIS 3.36 Maidenhead with the aim of supporting the ongoing management and monitoring of the NACES MPA in the context of a changing ocean.
Multibeam bathymetry raw data (Kongsberg EM 122 entire dataset) of RV SONNE during cruise SO286
Canada-Newfoundland & Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board
Global Habitat Suitability For Framework-Forming Cold-Water Corals
Multispecies tracking reveals a major seabird hotspot in the North Atlantic
Overview of (Sub)mesoscale Ocean Dynamics for the NAAMES Field Program
Mesoscale Eddies Structure Mesopelagic Communities
Influence of anticyclonic, warm-core eddies on mesopelagic fish assemblages in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean
Deep Sea Research Part I: Oceanographic Research Papers
Do Seabirds Differ from Other Migrants in Their Travel Arrangements? On Route Strategies of Cory's Shearwater during Its Trans-Equatorial Journey
The importance of migratory connectivity for global ocean policy
Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences
Census of seafloor sediments in the world's ocean
Tracking of Arctic terns Sterna paradisaea reveals longest animal migration
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Oceanographic influences on Deep Scattering Layers across the North Atlantic
Maritime Boundaries Geodatabase: Extended Continental Shelves, version 1
Migration and wintering of a declining seabird, the thick-billed murre Uria lomvia , on an ocean basin scale: Conservation implications
IHO-IOC GEBCO Gazetteer of Undersea Feature Names
Updated daily. Vessel presence and apparent fishing effort v20201001
Spatial and temporal changes in cumulative human impacts on the world's ocean
Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission
International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES)
Spatio-temporal distribution of blue sharks (Prionace glauca) in the North Atlantic Ocean: an analysis of populations structure, habitat preference and fishing pressure vulnerability
Migratory Connectivity in the Ocean (MiCO)
Highly migratory marine species nodes and corridors, developed with data contributed to MiCO
Available from the MiCO System Version 1.0. MiCO. https://mico.eco. Accessed 2022-06-16
Storm-Induced Predator-Prey Decoupling Promotes Springtime Accumulation of North Atlantic Phytoplankton
Mesozooplankton grazing minimally impacts phytoplankton abundance during spring in the western North Atlantic
OSPAR Data & Information Management System
OSPAR Inventory of Offshore Installations
Sei whale movements and behaviour in the North Atlantic inferred from satellite telemetry
Ocean-wide tracking of pelagic sharks reveals extent of overlap with longline fishing hotspots
Instability-Driven Benthic Storms below the Separated Gulf Stream and the North Atlantic Current in a High-Resolution Ocean Model
Multibeam bathymetry processed data (Kongsberg EM 122 transit dataset) of RV SONNE during cruise SO286, North Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean landscape: A basin-wide cluster analysis of the Atlantic near seafloor environment
Assessing Performance of Bayesian State-Space Models Fit to Argos Satellite Telemetry Locations Processed with Kalman Filtering
North Atlantic Blue and Fin Whales Suspend Their Spring Migration to Forage in Middle Latitudes: Building up Energy Reserves for the Journey?
Diet of non-breeding leach's storm-petrels (Hydrobates leucorhous) in the sub-polar frontal zone of the North Atlantic
GlobSed: Updated Total Sediment Thickness in the World's Oceans
World Data Service for Geophysics: https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/sedthick/
RRS Discovery Cruise DY080, 06 June – 01 July 2017. Underway visual transect seabird survey data
Global habitat suitability of deep-water Antipatharia
Knolls and seamounts in the world ocean - links to shape, kml and data files
Patterns of distribution of sound-scattering zooplankton in warm- and cold-core eddies in the Gulf of Mexico, from a narrowband acoustic Doppler current profiler survey
Integrated Assessment of Atlantic Marine Ecosystems in Space and Time
Obtained from Geographic Information System (GIS)
Species, unique identification (Semantic URI)
Antipatharia; areas beyond national jurisdiction; bentho-pelagic coupling; BirdLife International; bluefin tuna; blue shark; Cephalopods; chlorophyll-a concentration; eddy kinetic energy; european eel; Evlanov Seamount; fin whale; frontal zone; geodiversity; habitat suitability modelling; high seas; iAtlantic; mako shark; marine protected area; mesopelagic fish; mesoscale eddies; migration; Mount Doom; Multibeam Data; NACES MPA; North Atlantic Current; OSPAR; scleractinians; Seabirds; Seamounts; Sea surface temperature; sediment thickness; sei whale; shipping lanes; thick-billed murre
Acknowledgements: Thanks to Jannos Hennicke, Richard Emmerson, Michail Georgios Papadoyannakis, Eirik Drabløs Pettersen, Alice Belin, Pia Norling, Dominic Pattinson, Lena Avellan, Emily Corcoran and Barbara Middleton for their support throughout the revisions process. Also, thanks to the collaborators participating in the identification of the NACES MPA (listed in Annex 1 of the revised nomination proforma: https://www.ospar.org/documents?v=51436).