As we move to WKT defined Higher Geography (eg. North America, United States, California, Monterey County) we are finding that records falling offshore are not included (for good reason).

How we create appropriate higher geography for marine, aquatic, offshore localities needs to be decided.

Discussion points from #1107 :
-What about including EEZ zones for each coastal county or state? There could be WKTs for that which could replace or complement the existing terrestrial counties. EEZ = Economic Exclusion Zones dictate where you are fishing and which jurisdiction you fall under. We have used this to georeference fish and marine collections in the past.

we would create new HG that are appropriate for the localities-- if county is included then the HG would be specific to the county. yeah we are going to have to carve up the entire planet into wkts and HG. Overlap is inevitable and maybe not that terrible.

-Attaching shapes to geography removes the ambiguities. "Pacific Ocean" can start where the sand gets wet, or {pick a number} miles offshore, or WHATEVER, and I can immediately tell if a specimen is within that shape or not.

Overlap is inevitable and maybe not that terrible.

Agreed, especially WRT precision - "Yellowstone" laps three states and a bunch of counties, and you might know any of that (or not) for any specimen. It's not ideal, but we're stuck with it. At the same time we should respect "real" boundaries when they exist. As far as I can tell there's a hard border around San Diego County, and it looks like this:

Screen Shot 2019-11-15 at 1 52 05 PM

Something a mile offshore could arguably in California, Pacific Ocean, various finer-scaled marine-things we might add, etc., but it cannot justifiably be in San Diego County.

• we have resources to define or use a pre-existing GIS admin boundary but need to be clear about the task before we (I) start creating new HG.

-what do marine collections think makes sense? Need input!