The outer limits of the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone are listed by region and contained within zipped files. Within each updated zipped file, there are two sets of files-- 1) a text file containing points representing the outer boundary with a spacing of .5 nautical miles (nm) and 2) a shapefile representing the outer limit as a polyline. The comma-delimited text file has 4 columns called "ID" (a numeric sequence), "Latitude" (in decimal degrees), "Longitude" (in decimal degrees), and "SourceID" (identifies a particular maritime boundary, Federal Register Notice, or 200nm arcs measured from the baseline as the source). The Federal Register Notice identified in the SourceID refers to the Federal Register, August 23, 1995, "Exclusive Economic Zone and Maritime Boundaries: Notice of Limits." (Search at the following link: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/fr/search.html)
Note: At this time, the EEZ for Palmyra Atoll-Kingman Reef, Northern Mariana Islands (plus Guam), and American Samoa do not conform to the format used in the updated files. Updates to these data, which were computed and published in 1995 on the North American Datum of 1927 (NAD27), are anticipated in the near future. The updates will be formatted like the other EEZ datasets with FGDC-compliant metadata and will be available on the North American Datum of 1983/World Geodetic System of 1984.
Since the baseline from which the EEZ is measured is ambulatory and may change due to shoreline accretion or erosion, these limits may be superseded by the publication of a new chart edition. As a result, these files may or may not be current.
If you do not have software to view these shapefiles, ESRI has a free viewer to download at http://www.esri.com/software/arcexplorer/download.html. To view the shapefiles in any GIS, you will need to extract the shapefiles from the zipped file. Within ESRI's ArcExplorer, you can load and view the shapefiles using "Add Layers."
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