The three North American countries have identified the region that extends from the Gulf of California all the way to the Bering Strait as a high continental priority for biodiversity conservation, requiring cooperative efforts to ensure it continues to function as an interconnected web of life, capable of supporting all of its natural and human communities now and for future generations.

This data set portrays the 28 marine Priority Conservation Areas (PCAs) within the Baja to Bering region. PCAs are critically important areas of biodiversity and continental uniqueness under threat from human activities. Because they are essential to the healthy functioning of the entire Baja to Bering region, they are focal areas for conservation efforts, and are not intended as large marine protected areas.

These priority areas include highly productive fishing grounds in the Bering Sea, coral gardens of the Aleutians, globally unique glass-sponge reefs off British Columbia, marine mammal hotspots such as Monterey Bay and the Channel Islands, coastal lagoons of Baja California, as well as the incomparable biodiversity of the Gulf of California. The PCAs as represented in this data set serve to highlight general locations of conservation priority, based on their ecological significance, level of threats, and opportunities for trinational cooperation, as determined by expert consensus from the best available knowledge.

Information on the methodology used to identify these Priority Conservation Areas and detailed descriptions of each area can be found in Morgan, Lance, Sara Maxwell, Fan Tsao, Tara A.C. Wilkinson, and Peter Etnoyer; Marine Priority Conservation Areas: Baja California to the Bering Sea; Commission for Environmental Cooperation of North America and the Marine Conservation Biology Institute; Montreal, Canada; February 2005. Available online at http://www.cec.org/files/documents/publications/2201-marine-priority-conservation-areas-baja-california-bering-sea-en.pdf

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