Home - Protected Seas Navigator

The first global view of marine life protections.
So together, we can protect our blue planet.

PROTECTED AREAS

COUNTRIES & TERRITORIES

LANGUAGES

Navigator

Navigator is a free, interactive map of regulatory information for over 21,000 managed saltwater and coastal areas worldwide, including the high seas, to inform ocean management and conservation initiatives globally.

This global view of marine life protections is free to use so everyone — from fishers and boaters to policymakers and scientists — has the knowledge to ensure the waters that are important to them are adequately protected.

What is navigator?

I want to commend the entire team at ProtectedSeas for the incredible work you are doing to advance marine solutions that safeguard our oceans. Your initiatives — from Navigator to Marine Monitor — exemplify the spirit of innovation and conservation that define California.

Gavin Newsom

Governor, State of California

On behalf of NOAA I want to thank you for your organization’s excellent work on your recently published national database and online mapping application for marine managed area boundaries and regulation information. NOAA greatly values our public private partnership, an excellent illustration of the value of collaboration.

NOAA Administrator Benjamin P. Friedman

Deputy Under Secretary for Operations

We have found ProtectedSeas Navigator to be the best source of data and remarkably comprehensive tool for understanding the spatial implications of marine protected area regulations. This is a valuable resource for ocean conservation.

Mike Sweeney, Executive Director

The Nature Conservancy

We are really thrilled to be partnering with ProtectedSeas, which has a mapping tool called Navigator. No one can understand ocean protection without first understanding existing ocean regulations. You can’t care if you don’t know.

Dr. Sylvia Earle

Founder / Mission Blue

Explore Marine Protections by

EXPLORE NAVIGATOR

SEARCH & CLICK

Search for marine areas by country, name, management authority, focal species and click anywhere on the globe to see all marine areas and the specific restrictions.

EXPLORE NAVIGATOR

COUNTRY

Compare and sort countries by protection coverage. View all marine areas by protection level and area coverage within each country. See the map of the designated area, and understand the specific restrictions of each place.

EXPLORE COUNTRIES IN NAVIGATOR

MARINE AREA

Click anywhere on the globe to see all of the marine areas in that specific area. Sort by name, type and area size or get more detail, including species of concern, regulation summary and specific activity restrictions.

EXPLORE PROTECTED AREAS IN NAVIGATOR

ASSESSMENTS

Navigator data is useful for a wide range of conservation assessment and planning purposes from calculating protections by species to estimating progress towards 30% protection of marine biodiversity by 2030.

Learn more

Methodology

ProtectedSeas uses a standardized process to collect, synthesize, and map MPAs and other MMAs and assigns a Level of Fishing Protection (LFP) score to each area based on an analysis of restrictions on marine life extraction, coded on a 1-5 scale.

LEARN MORE

Our Partners

To support ocean conservation globally, we work with universities, marine conservation, and governmental organizations in the US and abroad to drive innovation, awareness and support for information solutions for marine conservation and protection. Because if you don’t have the information you need, how can you support the oceans upon which all life depends?

Work with us

Contact us to learn more about our work, request a demonstration or to discuss partnership opportunities.

CONTACT US

We are pleased to be in public/private partnership with NOAA's National MPA Center. This partnership has helped ensure the most comprehensive and accessible marine managed area dataset for the United States is available for both marine resource managers and the general public.