UK Marine Protected Area network statistics

JNCC calculates statistics for the whole of the UK Marine Protected Area (MPA) network to assess progress in MPA designation.

UK waters	UK waters area (km2)	Number of MPAs	MPA area (km2)	UK waters covered by MPAs (%)
All UK waters	885,430	378	336,412	38
Inshore	163,302	330	77,007	47
Offshore	722,128	78	259,405	36

Key information:

• UK waters:
  • delimited by the UK Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and the UK Continental Shelf;
  • inshore – waters between the coast (defined by mean high water (springs)) and the UK Territorial Sea limit (up to 12 nautical miles from charted baseline);
  • offshore – waters between the UK Territorial Sea limit and the UK Exclusive Economic Zone or UK continental shelf.

• MPA designation types included:  Highly Protected Marine Areas (HPMAs), Marine Conservation Zones (MCZs), Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) with marine components, Special Protection Areas (SPAs) with marine components, Nature Conservation MPAs and national MPAs in Scotland.
  
  
• Some MPAs cross the inshore/offshore boundary and contribute to both the inshore and offshore MPA counts. The total number of MPAs should be read from the 'All UK waters' row only, not summed from the inshore and offshore MPA counts.
  
  
• Area calculations in Projected Coordinate System: European Terrestrial Reference System 1989 Lambert Azimuthal Equal-Area (EPSG: 3035), using transformations: OSGB 1936 to ETRS89 (OSTN15 EPSG:7709) and ETRS89 to WGS 84 (1) (EPSG:1149).
  
  
• MPA boundaries were cut to mean high water mark (mean high water springs in Scotland) to exclude terrestrial areas, using OSMasterMap data for Eng/Wal/Scot and OSNI 2008 1:50,000 for Northern Ireland.
  
  

This work is dedicated to the memory of Stuart Wallace (1963–2022), who contributed hugely to the development and upkeep of these statistics.

Last updated: June 2026