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For NOAA/National Ocean Service Nautical Charts
Maritime boundaries for the United States are determined from the official U.S. baseline, recognized as the low-water line along the coast as marked on the official U.S. nautical charts in accordance with the articles of the Law of the Sea. The Office of Coast Survey is responsible for determining and depicting the Three Nautical Mile Line, Territorial Sea, Contiguous Zone, and Exclusive Economic Zone on NOAA's nautical charts.
Download Digital Maritime Limits
The following links contain zipped shapefiles of the Three Nautical Mile Line, Territorial Sea (12 naut. mi.), and Contiguous Zone (24 naut. mi.) as represented on NOAA's nautical charts. For more information about each dataset, metadata is also provided. This site will be updated frequently with new digital boundary information.
Please click on your area of interest and download the zipped files. 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 zip file. Within ArcExplorer, you can load and view the shapefiles using the "Add Layers."
Note: To download the current EEZ data, please go to http://nauticalcharts.noaa.gov/csdl/eez.htm.
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Location
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Date Posted
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2004-02-23
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2003-08-27
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2004-03-01
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2004-06-15
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2004-06-29
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2004-07-08
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2004-07-19
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2005-12-29
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2005-12-29
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2005-06-09
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2005-03-03
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2005-09-15
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2005-12-06
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2006-06-19
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2007-09-10
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2008-02-12
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2008-03-12
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2008-04-03
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Descriptions of Maritime Limits
Three Nautical Mile Line-- The Three Nautical Mile Line, previously identified as the outer limit of the territorial sea, is retained on NOAA's nautical charts as it continues to depict the jurisdictional limit of other laws. The 9-nautical mile Natural Resource Boundary off the Gulf coast of Florida, Texas, and Puerto Rico, and the Three Nautical Mile Line elsewhere remain in most cases the inner limit of Federal fisheries jurisdiction and the outer limit of the jurisdiction of the states. The territorial sea was extended from three to twelve nautical miles by Presidential Proclamation No. 5928 on December 27, 1988.
Territorial Sea-- The territorial sea is delimited either from base points on the land mass (normally at the low-water line along the coast) or from baselines connecting such points in accordance with international law. The coastal state enjoys sovereignty and jurisdiction over the territorial sea subject to the right of innocent passage for foreign vessels. The maximum breadth of the territorial sea allowed under international law as reflected in the LOS Convention is twelve nautical miles.
Contiguous Zone-- Presidential Proclamation No. 7219 on August 2, 1999 extended the Contiguous Zone from its prior limit of 12 nautical miles from the baseline to 24 nautical miles. Under international law, a contiguous zone is an area contiguous to a nation's territorial sea and in which the nation may exercise the control necessary to prevent infringement of its customs, fiscal, sanitation, or immigration laws and regulations within its territory or territorial sea. It may also exercise the control necessary to punish infringement of the above laws and regulations committed within its territory or territorial sea.
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Revised Monday June 02 2008by OCS Webmaster