(11/03/00) This composite of existing areas in the Northeast Region was presented by Steve Edwards,
NEFSC Woods Hole, at the 1st US-Japan GIS in Fisheries Science Symposium held in Seattle, 1999.
The increasing use of time and area closures emphasizes the need for fishing vessels to have advanced
display systems in order to keep up to date with current and newly proposed management actions.

(12/01/00) New areas have been added to our offshore waters since that time, and more have been proposed. Here is a composite of as many areas as we can identify for the Gulf of Maine/Georges Bank region. The magenta areas have been proposed as protected areas in the NEFMC Habitat Committee, the yellow ones (as well as two others in the MidAtlantic) are scallop seed areas proposed for multiyear closure in the Scallop Committee, and the red ones as permanent closures by the Marine Conservation Biology Institute. The recent MPA initiative proposed by the Clinton administration and expanded with the National Academy of Sciences meeting in San Francisco will likely complicate this situation further.