The Sectoral Marine Plan aims to identify the most sustainable plan options for the future development of commercial-scale offshore wind energy in Scotland, including deep water wind technologies and covers both Scottish inshore and offshore waters (extending out to the Exclusive Economic Zone limit). The Sectoral Marine seeks to contribute to the achievement of Scottish and UK energy and climate change policy objectives and targets, through the provision of a spatial strategy to inform the seabed leasing process for commercial offshore wind energy in Scottish waters, which: - Minimises the potential adverse effects on other marine users, economic sectors and the environment resulting from further commercial-scale offshore wind development; and - Maximises opportunities for economic development, investment and employment in Scotland, by identifying new opportunities for commercial scale offshore wind development, including deeper water wind technologies. The draft Plan Options ("DPO") provide the spatial footprint for this Sectoral Marine Plan.

The 15 Scottish sea areas are based on areas previously adopted for certain environmental monitoring programmes. The data from these 15 areas can be presented regionally and also reasonably aggregated to form a national picture and to develop information for the two main areas required for the Marine Strategy Framework Directive initial assessment: the Greater North Sea (Area II) and the Celtic Seas (Area III) which are existing sea areas used by OSPAR (the Oslo Paris Convention for the Protection of the North East Atlantic)

The 21 Scottish marine regions and offshore marine regions are used for state of the sea assessments. These areas consolidate the existing statutory Scottish Marine Regions with non-statutory offshore marine regions. For the purposes of assessment, the offshore marine regions extend to the continental shelf limits (adjacent to Scotland)

Fishing for razor clams (Ensis spp.) within the Scottish zone is prohibited. For a trial period, Marine Scotland will authorise (under Article 43 of EC Regulation No. 850/1998 and article 4(2) of Scottish SI 2017 No. 419) electrofishing for razor clams (Ensis spp.) in certain areas around Scotland for scientific research.

This web feature service (WMS) contains those layers held on Marine Scotland's Marine Scotland Maps portal where Marine Scotland are the originator or custodian, but the data is limited to view only (eg licensed IPR from third party). Marine Scotland are a directorate of the Scottish Government.

The Scottish Marine Regions are 11 areas established for the purposes of regional marine planning, defined by The Scottish Marine Regions Order 2015. These regions are sub-areas of both the "Scottish marine area" defined in the Marine (Scotland) Act 2010 and "Scottish inshore region" defined in the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009. Marine planning will take place at a local level within these regions, where regional marine planning will be delegated to Marine Planning Partnerships (MPPs).

In order to demonstrate the density of accommodation along the Irish Coast all accommodation points provided by Failte Ireland where processed by using kernel density analysis to aggregate points which are spatially clustered, highlighting areas of high density. Data points were plotted from a Fáilte Ireland Accommodation dataset. Using Kernel Density, a raster of high to low density was produced and contours demonstrating the transitions were created. These polylines were then merged with the bounds of a 25km buffer polygon to create a polygon. The separate polygons were then categorised into their different categories similar to the original raster.

The location of seabed gas pipeline infrastructure from Cork to the Kinsale platform, Mayo to the Corrib platform and the international connector routes between Ireland and Scotland.

This Illustrates the existence or planned presence of marine renewable energy sites (wind farm authorisations) in Irish waters, as catalogued and displayed by 4C Offshore and DP Energy. The features were digitized manually from visualisations of windfarm authorisations viewable on https://www.4coffshore.com/offshorewind/ while the location for Inis Ealga was supplied in a shapefile provided by DP Energy. The research was undertaken by the MaREI Centre for Marine and Renewable Energy and published in 2019.