Seahorse species predicted habitat distributions and associated environmental data layers covering the shelf seas surrounding the UK

This dataset contains predicted seahorse habitat distributions for two species (*Hippocampus hippocampus *and *H. guttulatus*) and the genus combined (Hippocampus hippocampus MAXENT.asc, Hippocampus guttulatus MAXENT.asc and Hippocampus sp. MAXENT.asc, respectively). Rasters of the raw predicted habitat suitability outputs from the maximum entropy (MAXENT, Phillips et al. 2006) species distribution model algorithm are provided. Additionally, the environmental data layers used for modelling the species distributions, including distance to seagrass habitat (degrees) (Distance From Seagrass.tif), distance to the coastline (DistCo.tif) bathymetry (m) (Bathy.tif), minimum winter and maximum summer SST (oC) (Kriging SST Winter Min.tif and Kriging SST Summer Max.tif, respectively) and chlorophyll a concentration (mg m-3) (Kriging Chla Winter Smooth.tif and Kriging Chla Summer Smooth.tif, respectively). All raster layers are provided in the WGS84 (EPSG::4326) spatial reference system. All raster layers are at a gridded resolution of 0.0042 x 0.0042 degrees. All layers cover the shelf seas surrounding the UK, including the English Channel, Celtic Seas, North Sea, and extend into shallow coastal and estuarine habitats. Raster layers of predicted habitat suitability are provided in ASCI format, whilst environmental predictor layers are provided in TIFF format. This work was prioritised by Natural England’s Seahorse Working Group and was funded by Natural England. This work was conducted in collaboration with The Seahorse Trust who provided the seahorse occurrence data. The information provided will support marine spatial planning to reduce the broader impact of anthropogenic activities and enable better decision-making to protect these sensitive species and their habitats.