The defined areas of the Quota Management Areas are based on the FMA boundary definitions (first schedule of the Fisheries Act, 1996), and are either a combination of FMA’s or correspond directly to an FMA. Legal definitions of the boundaries of the Fisheries Management Areas (FMAs) and some individual stocks are contained within the first schedule of the Fisheries Act, 1996. Remaining stock definitions were sourced from notices of Declaration of New Stocks Subject to Quota Management System. QMA boundaries were created as noted in the “Fisheries (E-logbook Users Instructions and Codes) Circular 2018” (Schedule 2, Part 1A).QMA’s are species specific and are created using different combinations of Fisheries Management areas, or in some cases specific boundaries described in legislated declarations of new stocks into the QMS. This layer has been created from a direct copy of the general FMA’s layer, with the appropriate FMA’s combined together. Legal definition of the FMA boundaries is dependent on a legally authoritative layers depicting the EEZ boundary and mean high water mark. EEZ and Topo50 Coastline datasets sourced from LINZ and released under CC-BY 4.0 were used in the creation of this dataset. All inland boundaries within this dataset have been approximated and do not reflect the intention of the Act as stated in Note 3 of Schedule 1 (all inland waters are considered a part of the FMA into which they flow directly). Most areas created from notices of Declaration of New Stocks Subject to Quota Management System state the landward boundaries follow the mean high-water springs which is not reflected in this dataset. This data has been supplied in WSG84 Mercator 41 projection. The data was last updated as of 1 October 2019.