The boundaries of the marine and coastal Natura 2000 sites, representing an ecological network of protected areas for Europe are now accessible from marineregions.org. The sites are integrated into the marine gazetteer. Selection criteria used when defining a 'marine' site, was by checking if the site falls (partly) within the Exclusive Economic Zone of the country, based on the version 7 of the high resolution EEZ GIS cover. Currently 2894 marine Natura 2000 sites are available. The GIS boundaries of these sites, defined by the EU Habitat and Bird directives are provided to Marine Regions in real time through a webservice developed by the European Environmental Agency. EEA map services are available here.