---
name: marine-regions-maritime-boundaries-ingestion
description: "How to get Marine Regions maritime boundaries (EEZ) data into a pandas DataFrame and Parquet: access, the request, the format, limits, quirks and terms."
---

# Query the Marine Regions EEZ boundaries WFS into geopandas

Source entry: https://signal-lab-jet.vercel.app/datasets/marine-regions-maritime-boundaries
Provider: https://www.marineregions.org/downloads.php
Checked against the provider's documentation: 2026-11-05

## Access
- No account or key for the public WFS/OGC web services.
- Cite Flanders Marine Institute (2026): MarineRegions.org and do not re-host the downloads elsewhere, per the licence page.

## Request
```bash
curl -sL 'https://geo.vliz.be/geoserver/MarineRegions/wfs?service=WFS&version=1.0.0&request=GetFeature&typeName=eez_boundaries&maxFeatures=5&outputformat=application/json'
```

## Format
GeoJSON FeatureCollection of EEZ boundary line features (line_id, line_name, line_type, mrgid_sov1, territory1, sovereign1 and related fields).

## Load into pandas and Parquet
Needs Python 3 with requests, pandas and pyarrow.
```python
"""Marine Regions EEZ boundaries: WFS GetFeature (GeoJSON) -> geopandas -> Parquet. No key; CC-BY-4.0, cite VLIZ."""
import requests
import pandas as pd
import geopandas as gpd

URL = "https://geo.vliz.be/geoserver/MarineRegions/wfs"
params = {"service": "WFS", "version": "1.0.0", "request": "GetFeature", "typeName": "eez_boundaries", "maxFeatures": 5, "outputformat": "application/json"}
r = requests.get(URL, params=params, timeout=60)
r.raise_for_status()
gdf = gpd.GeoDataFrame.from_features(r.json()["features"])
gdf.to_parquet("marineregions_eez_boundaries_sample.parquet")
print(len(gdf), "features;", list(gdf.columns[:5]))

```
Run by us on 2026-11-05 (python 3 | requests | geopandas | pyarrow). Result: WFS GetFeature returned a 5-feature GeoJSON FeatureCollection for typeName=eez_boundaries on 2026-11-05.

## Limits
- This entry covers the versioned EEZ boundary layer; other layers (12 NM, 24 NM, High Seas, Extended Continental Shelves) use different typeName values.
- Marine Regions asks users to always refer to marineregions.org rather than mirror the downloads elsewhere.

## Quirks
- The WFS endpoint lives on geo.vliz.be, a different host from marineregions.org.
- maxFeatures caps the response; omit it for the full layer (large for World EEZ v12).

## Terms and attribution
- "Marine Regions is not meant to be used for legal, economical (in the sense of exploration of natural resources) or navigational purposes. It is developed solely for scientific, educational and research purposes."
- "This dataset is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License."
- Terms page: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

## Sources
- https://www.marineregions.org/disclaimer.php: "Marine Regions is not meant to be used for legal, economical (in the sense of exploration of natural resources) or navigational purposes. It is developed solely for scientific, educational and research purposes."
- https://www.marineregions.org/disclaimer.php: "We kindly request our users not to make our products available for download elsewhere and to always refer to marineregions.org"
- https://www.marineregions.org/downloads.php: "This dataset is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License."

## Help improve this skill
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Information for educational purposes only. Free tiers, limits and licenses belong to the providers and may change; check the provider's own terms before using the data.