Reviews by experts have associated coastal areas of the world’s oceans into large marine ecosystems (LME) which share common fauna and oceanographic characteristics. This is an ongoing process. Further LMEs will be described, and larger ones could be subdivided LMEs can be used as a structure for ecological models and they roughly nest into larger subdivisons of the world’s oceans called Biogeochemical Provinces. Another important classification scheme for the world’s oceans is the Marine Ecoregions.

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Large Marine Ecosystem homepage (external link)

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