# AGENTS.md - NOAA Marine Protected Areas Inventory

Guidance for AI agents and LLMs working with this collection.

## Overview

The NOAA MPA Center's Marine Protected Areas Inventory (v2024, layer NOAA_MPA_Inventory_2023): 981 boundaries of existing marine protected areas under U.S. federal, state, territorial, local and tribal jurisdiction that meet the IUCN definition of a protected area. All 35 native attributes are kept as columns. Two of them are the crosswalk keys to other registries: `ProSeasID` (ProtectedSeas Navigator `site_id`) and `WDPA_Cd` (World Database on Protected Areas id). Fishery management areas and similar are not in the Inventory. Not to be used for navigation; not a legal document (consult the CFR or state code for regulatory boundaries).

Licence CC-PDDC; credit: NOAA National Ocean Service, Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, Marine Protected Areas Center, NOAA Marine Protected Areas Inventory (2024 release). Public domain; not to be used for navigation. Processed by Ocean Metrics.

## Find a place

```sql
SELECT * FROM read_parquet('https://storage.oceanmetrics.io/gazetteer/mpa_inventory/places.parquet')
WHERE name ILIKE '%california%';
```

`place_id` is unique and prefixed; `status` / `status_source` / `status_date` say whether the place is current and
where that is documented. Check `status` before treating a lease or area as live.

## Render on a map

Load `places.pmtiles` (layer `mpa_inventory`) into MapLibre GL via the PMTiles protocol; `styles/default.json` is a starting style.