NOAA Essential Fish Habitat Screener — EFH Consultation Check

Screen any set of coastal or offshore coordinates against live NOAA Essential Fish Habitat (EFH) polygons with a single spatial query per point. Get a grounded yes/no — is the point inside designated EFH, which species/sites and life stages overlap it, the fishery-management council that manages them, the habitat acres, a state-waters flag, and a nmfs_efh_consultation_likely flag — with a source citation on every row.

Any federal action (permit, funding, or authorization) that may adversely affect EFH triggers Magnuson-Stevens Act Section 305(b)(2) consultation with NOAA Fisheries. This actor is the marine sibling of the FWS Critical Habitat Screener (ESA Section 7) and pairs naturally with the BOEM Offshore Wind Lease Tracker for offshore siting due diligence.

Data source: NOAA Essential Fish Habitat national inventory ArcGIS FeatureServer (services2.arcgis.com/FiaPA4ga0iQKduv3/.../nationwide_efh_1), queried live via a server-side point-intersect (returnGeometry=false, so the large council-scale polygons are never downloaded). No scraping, no API key required.

Who it's for

• Offshore wind & marine energy siting teams screening lease areas, cable routes, and export corridors for EFH before survey and permitting.
• Ports, dredging & marine construction de-risking a project footprint — an EFH hit can add an EFH assessment and NOAA Fisheries consultation to the schedule.
• Aquaculture developers siting net-pens/leases relative to designated habitat and HAPCs.
• Environmental consultants & NEPA/marine-permitting teams doing early desktop screening before an EFH Assessment or Biological Evaluation.
• AI agents / MCP tool chains running automated marine site diligence as one step in a larger permitting or acquisition workflow.

Example input

{
  "assets": [
    { "lat": 28.5, "lon": -91.0, "label": "Gulf of Mexico (offshore Louisiana)" },
    { "lat": 41.6, "lon": -70.7, "label": "Nantucket Sound cable landing" },
    { "lat": 39.7392, "lon": -104.9903, "label": "Denver CO (inland control)" }
  ],
  "radiusMiles": 0,
  "maxAssets": 500
}

Verified sample run

A real 6-site run (2026-07-21, radiusMiles: 0) returned 152 rows and 0 errors. Coastal and offshore points return one row per EFH designation, so the row count per site reflects how many overlapping species/lifestage/council designations apply there:

Asset	Rows	Consultation flag
Gulf of Mexico (offshore Louisiana)	13	true
Galveston, TX (nearshore)	17	true
Chesapeake Bay mouth, VA	37	true
Massachusetts Bay	76	true
San Pedro Bay, CA	8	true
Denver, CO (inland control)	1 (CLEAR)	false

The Gulf point's 13 rows span the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council plus Atlantic Highly Migratory Species designations. The inland control returned a single valid CLEAR row (in_efh: false) — a billable result, not an error. This exact run is published as the actor's example task, so you can open it and re-run it as-is.

Output fields (one row per EFH species/lifestage hit; one CLEAR row when clear)

Field	Description
asset_label	Your name for the screened point, echoed back
asset_lat / asset_lon	Coordinates screened
radius_miles	Buffer radius used (0 = pure point-in-polygon)
in_efh	true / false / null (null = ERROR row)
efh_site_name	Species or EFH site whose habitat this point intersects
life_stage	Life stage designated (ALL, Eggs, Larval, Juvenile, Adult, ...)
designation_type	EFH or HAPC (Habitat Area of Particular Concern)
is_hapc	true when the designation is a HAPC
fmc_code / fmc_name	Managing fishery-management council (code + full name)
region	NOAA administrative region code
acres	Area of the intersecting EFH polygon in acres
in_state_waters	true/false/null — in state waters (~3 nm) vs federal
centroid_lat / centroid_lon	Centroid of the intersecting polygon
council_text_url	Link to the council's EFH text description (PDF)
nmfs_efh_consultation_likely	true when the point intersects any EFH
checked_at	UTC timestamp of the check
error	Populated only on invalid-input / service-error rows
disclaimer / source_url	Advisory notice + exact FeatureServer queried

Use as an MCP tool

This actor is discoverable and callable by AI agents (Claude, Cursor, etc.) via mcp.apify.com. Pass an array of {lat, lon, label} points and get back a grounded, cited in/near-EFH verdict per point — clean input/output for chaining into larger marine site-diligence or permitting agent workflows.

FAQ

Does this actor need an API key? No — the NOAA EFH ArcGIS service is public and keyless.

Inland points return nothing — is that a bug? No. EFH is a coastal and marine designation only. An inland point (or any point with no EFH nearby) legitimately returns a single CLEAR row with in_efh = false — a valid, billable result, not an error.

Does an EFH hit mean I definitely need to consult? No. nmfs_efh_consultation_likely flags that your point intersects designated EFH, which is the trigger condition for Magnuson-Stevens Section 305(b)(2) consultation when a federal action may adversely affect that habitat. Whether consultation is actually required is determined by the federal action agency and NOAA Fisheries. Confirm with the regional NOAA Fisheries Habitat Conservation Division (habitat.noaa.gov).

What's the difference between EFH and HAPC? EFH is the broad designation of waters and substrate necessary to fish for spawning, breeding, feeding, or growth. A HAPC (Habitat Area of Particular Concern) is a subset of EFH singled out for ecological importance, sensitivity, or rarity — it warrants extra scrutiny in consultation.

Why can one point return many rows? EFH designations overlap heavily — a single Gulf point can fall inside Red Drum, Reef Fish, Shrimp, Coastal Migratory Pelagics, and several Highly Migratory Species (shark/tuna) habitats at once. The actor returns every distinct species/lifestage/council overlap, deduped.

How is pricing calculated? $10 per 1,000 result rows ($0.01/row) — one row per EFH species hit, or one row per clear point. No charge for actor start.

Can I screen a large portfolio? Yes — pass up to 2,000 points per run via maxAssets; each point queries the live ArcGIS service in sequence.

Related screeners

This actor is part of a family of single-coordinate federal due-diligence screeners that all take the same assets[]{lat,lon,label} input shape, so you can run several over the same site list and join the results per site.

• Site Due Diligence Bundle — 15 federal overlays for one coordinate in a single call.
• BOEM Offshore Wind Lease Tracker — BOEM offshore wind lease areas and planning areas.
• FWS Critical Habitat Screener — the terrestrial sibling: ESA Section 7 designated critical habitat.
• EPA Impaired Waters 303(d) Screener — Clean Water Act 303(d) impaired waters near the site.
• Wild & Scenic River Proximity Screener — designated Wild & Scenic River corridors and Section 7 exposure.