Pelagic Provinces of the World 2012

The Pelagic Provinces of the World (PPOW) are a classification system of the world’s off-shelf surface waters (< 200 m depths). They represent a nested system of 4 realms, 7 biomes and 37 pelagic provinces, and were delineated based on review of existing information and expert knowledge of pelagic biota. They complement the system of marine ecoregions of the world (MEOW), which cover coastal and shelf waters. The pelagic province boundaries shown here were extracted from a PPOW-MEOW dataset created by UNEP-WCMC. Original Shapefile and Metadata Online: http://data.unep-wcmc.org/datasets/38