New Zealand’s Continental Shelf
A continental shelf is the gently sloping submerged margin of the continent, between the shore and the uppermost continental slope.
Why do we need to know the boundary of our continental shelf?
Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), maritime nations such as New Zealand manage a 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).
This awards our nation economic rights to water-column resources including deep-sea fisheries, and seafloor and sub-seafloor resources, such as oil, gas and metallic minerals
New Zealand, with the help of GNS Science NIWA, LINZ and MFAT, has recently successfully extended our maritime boundary beyond the EEZ, by showing that our continental shelf extends beyond 200 nautical miles from the coastline.
New Zealand’s EEZ and continental shelf cover an area greater than Europe and is the 5th largest in the world.
Check out our computer simulated flyby over Zealandia here
