# Submarine cable areas

The general footprint of commercial and research submarine cables in U.S. waters as 2,816 areas (polygons; the first-15 list calls them lines). A cable area may hold one or more cables; most records carry no cable name (`shortname`, `cablesystem`, `owner` mostly empty), so names fall back to a generic label plus the source OBJECTID, which is the id. The native `status` (In Service, ...) is empty for 2,411 records, so `status` is 'charted'.

- **Collection**: `noaa_submarine_cables` v1.0.2, 2816 features, GeoParquet 1.1 (`places.parquet`) and PMTiles (`places.pmtiles`, layer `noaa_submarine_cables`)
- **Licence**: CC-PDDC - U.S. federal government work (NOAA); the AGOL item carries NOAA's 17 U.S.C. 403 notice (material 'not subject to copyright protection within the United States'; foreign copyrights may apply). Credit NOAA, do not imply endorsement. https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#105
- **Attribution**: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Office for Coastal Management (OCM), via MarineCadastre.gov. Public domain. Processed by Ocean Metrics.
- **Refresh**: monthly, by `.github/workflows/sync.yml` (re-fetched only when the source's `editingInfo.dataLastEditDate` or record count changed)

## Sources and provenance

| Component | Source | Item | Data last edit | Retrieved | Records | Checksum (sha-256 of payload) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| - | https://coast.noaa.gov/arcgis/rest/services/Hosted/SubmarineCables/FeatureServer/0 | 92482906ec41411cbe07da3d4d2a381b | not served | 2026-10-16T07:55:56Z | 2816 | `c8cd3442844b2475...` |

Machine-readable copy: [`provenance.json`](./provenance.json) (also in `collection.json` and the Parquet footer).

## Schema

| Column | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| place_id | string | prefixed, unique id (e.g. BOEM:OCS-P 0561, BOEM:PA:SOC, AOA:N1-A) |
| authority | string | organisation that publishes the boundary (BOEM, AOA = NOAA Aquaculture Opportunity Areas) |
| source_id | string | the source layer's own identifier for the feature (lease number, planning-area code, OBJECTID, AOA code) |
| name | string | human-readable name |
| place_type | string | kind of place: lease, planning_area or aoa |
| geom_type | string | geometry type (MultiPolygon) |
| status | string | lifecycle status (e.g. active, cancelled, relinquished, settlement_pending, rescinded, draft_proposed, identified) |
| status_source | string | URL that documents the status |
| status_date | string | ISO date (or year) the status took effect or was last confirmed; may be empty |
| status_upstream | string | the source's own status code, verbatim (e.g. BOEM LEASE_STATUS_CD, AREA_STATUS); null when the source has none. may disagree with `status` |
| status_history | string | JSON array of dated status events [{date, value, source, note}], ascending; null when none is logged |
| source_url | string | the service endpoint or download the boundary was fetched from |
| source_date | date32[day] | date of the source's last data edit (retrieval date when the source serves none) |
| retrieved | timestamp[ms, tz=UTC] | UTC time the boundary was fetched |
| version | string | collection release version this row was built for |
| license | string | SPDX identifier of the licence (CC-PDDC = public-domain U.S. government work) |
| attribution | string | credit line to show with the data |
| objectid | int64 | native attribute of the source layer (objectid) |
| shortname | string | native attribute of the source layer (shortname) |
| cablesystem | string | native attribute of the source layer (cablesystem) |
| owner | string | native attribute of the source layer (owner) |
| status_src | string | native attribute of the source layer (status_src) |
| region | string | native attribute of the source layer (region) |
| SHAPE__Length | double | native attribute of the source layer (SHAPE__Length) |
| SHAPE__Area | double | native attribute of the source layer (SHAPE__Area) |
| bbox | struct<xmin: double, ymin: double, xmax: double, ymax: double> | GeoParquet bbox-covering column (xmin, ymin, xmax, ymax) |
| geometry | binary | MULTIPOLYGON, EPSG:4326, split at +/-180 antimeridian |

Native attributes keep the source layer's names; a native name equal to a gazetteer column ignoring case
(`NAME` vs `name`) is suffixed `_src`.

## Files

| File | Size | Checksum |
|---|---|---|
| places | 12.2 MB | `122071901dd863c5...` |
| places-tiles | 8.8 MB | `1220d63049a8bb5e...` |
| styles/default | 1 kB | `12206468fba4c00e...` |
| provenance | 1 kB | `1220640a50ae6a63...` |
| documentation | 0 kB | `1220e3b0c44298fc...` |

## Quick start

```sql
SELECT place_id, name, status, status_date
FROM read_parquet('https://storage.oceanmetrics.io/gazetteer/noaa_submarine_cables/places.parquet')
ORDER BY place_id;
```

## Changes

- **1.0.2**: first release.