Georges Bank is a large elevated area of the sea floor which separates the Gulf of Maine from the Atlantic Ocean and is situated between Cape Cod, Massachusetts (USA) and Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia (Canada).
The origin of its name is obscure. The Velasco map in 1610 prepared for King James I of England used the name 'S. Georges Banck'; a common practice where the English patron saint St. George's name was sprinkled around the English colonized world. By the 1850s it was known as simply as Georges Bank.
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Georges Bank is oval shaped and measures approximately 149 miles (240 kilometres) in length by 75 miles (120 kilometres) in width, making it larger in area than Massachusetts. Located 62 miles (100 kilometres) offshore, Georges Bank is part of the continental shelf and during the Wisconsin glaciation was actually part of the North American mainland. Georges Bank is now submerged, and its depths range from several metres to several dozen metres, placing almost the entire bank fully 330 feet (100 m) (or more) shallower than the Gulf of Maine to the north.
Georges Bank is the most westward of the great Atlantic fishing banks - those now submerged portions of the North American mainland which now comprise the continental shelf running from the Grand Banks of Newfoundland to Georges.
Gulf of Maine shelf waters are the Bank's primary source. They enter the northern flank, move clockwise around the eastern end, and then westward along the southern flank, mostly emptying into the Mid-Atlantic Bight (the continental shelf ocean between Cape Hatteras and Georges Bank).
Georges Bank, while not having the most productive fishery in the world (the Grand Banks takes this claim), has great prominence in that it is probably the most geographically accessible of all the fishing banks in the North Atlantic. Lying adjacent to New England's famous seaports, Georges Bank is single-handedly responsible for the development of coastal fisheries in towns such as Gloucester, Massachusetts and Yarmouth, Nova Scotia.
For over 400 years, Georges Bank supported lucrative fisheries for Atlantic cod and halibut. Over time, bottom trawlers became very efficient, some catching as much cod in an hour as traditional boats caught in a season. Bottom trawlers, however, damaged the sea floor coral and sponge habitats, and federal fisheries regulations aim to control this large scale overfishing to establish future sustainability.[1]
From 1976 to 1982, oil companies drilled ten exploratory wells in the US part of the Georges Bank.[2] None was successful, however, and both Canada and the United States have since imposed moratoriums on oil exploration and production on the Georges Bank, to ensure fisheries conservation.[3]
The decision by Canada and the United States to declare an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of 200 nautical miles (370 km) in the late 1970s led to overlapping EEZ claims on Georges Bank, and resulted in quickly deteriorating relations between fishers from both countries, who respectively asserted claim to the fishery resources. Both nations agreed in 1979 to refer the question of maritime boundary delimitation to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Following five years of hearings and consultation, the IJC delivered its decision in 1984, which split the maritime boundary in the Gulf of Maine between both nations out to the 200 nautical miles limit, giving the bulk of Georges Bank to the United States. Canada's portion of the Gulf of Maine now includes the easternmost portion of Georges Bank.
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