About Charted Waters & how we verify information

What "verified" actually means here

Every location, species, business, and piece of gear guidance on this site carries a status badge. That badge is never decorative — it reflects exactly how the record behind it was actually researched, and every one of the five statuses below has a specific, checkable meaning. A record never gets upgraded to a stronger status just because most of it checks out, or because more time has passed — only because a specific new fact was actually confirmed against a real source.

Sample data

Placeholder/illustrative content for this prototype — not yet checked against a real-world source.

Unverified

Drawn from a named source but not independently confirmed. Double-check before relying on it.

Partially verified

Part of this record is confirmed against an official source; other parts are not. See the notes below for exactly which.

Approximate

A real place or fact confirmed via an official source, but a specific detail (often exact coordinates) is an estimate, not something that source states outright.

Verified

Confirmed against an official or primary source as of the date shown.

A related but different scale covers this site's Learn section: each lesson is drafted, then moves to in-review, and only becomes visible on the live site once it's reviewed — an unreviewed lesson is never published, not even labeled as a draft in public. That's a different question from the status badges above ("has this instructional content been reviewed" rather than "how sure are we this fact about the world is true"), which is why it uses its own, separate model instead of reusing the same five statuses.

What this site will never do

• Restate a size limit, season, or possession limit as a permanent fact — those change, so this site links directly to the official Virginia Marine Resources Commission or Dept. of Wildlife Resources page instead of copying a number that could go stale silently. See Regulations & Safety.
• Present an estimated map coordinate as a surveyed, exact one — a location marked "Approximate" means the place itself is real and confirmed, but the pin is this project's own estimate, not something the source itself states.
• Show a generic placeholder graphic in a way that could be mistaken for a real photograph of a specific location, business, or catch.
• Collapse safety, legal-retention, or protected-species guidance behind a "read more" disclosure — that content is always shown in full.
• Fabricate a business detail, price, or regulation number to fill a gap. An unresearched record stays honestly unresearched rather than being filled in from a guess.

How this site organizes water and fishing settings

Species and locations across this site are organized along two separate, independent questions — what kind of water are you fishing, and what kind of trip or access setting are you planning? A species or spot can honestly belong to more than one answer to either question, and the two questions never imply each other: a saltwater species isn't automatically an offshore one, and an offshore species isn't automatically legal to keep.

Water environment

Freshwater

Ponds, lakes, reservoirs, and non-tidal rivers with no salt influence.

Tidal & Brackish

Tidal rivers, creeks, and marsh water where fresh and salt water mix — salinity varies by location, season, and rainfall rather than sitting at one fixed level.

Saltwater

The open Chesapeake Bay, ocean surf, and offshore Atlantic waters — a water-chemistry category, not a trip-distance one. A surf-caster on the beach and an angler running to a canyon are both fishing saltwater.

Fishing setting

A coarser, practical category describing the kind of trip or access involved — not a legal or scientific boundary unless a specific record says otherwise. From a local pond to a deepwater canyon: Pond & Lake, River & Stream, Tidal River & Creek, Bay & Estuary, Shore/Surf/Pier, Inshore, Nearshore, Offshore, and Deepwater. "Deepwater" describes a real, practical fishing trip (typically deep-dropping or trolling in several-hundred-plus feet of water) — never a claim that a species lives permanently at that depth.

What these categories are — and aren't

• Discovery categories, not legal boundaries. Filtering by "Offshore" or checking a species' water environment never substitutes for confirming current regulations, season, or a location's actual public-access status.
• Practical fishing access, not just biological habitat. A species' fishing settings describe where anglers realistically target it, informed by (but not identical to) where it biologically occurs — a species can occur somewhere this site has no confirmed access point for yet.
• Independent of charter terminology. A charter operator's own use of "offshore" or "nearshore" may not exactly match this site's definitions — always confirm trip specifics directly with the operator.
• Never a guarantee. Classifying a species or location under a water environment or fishing setting is never a promise you'll catch anything there.

How the interactive map works

The map on Locations and each location's own detail page loads its map tiles directly from OpenStreetMap — a nonprofit, community-run map project, not a service this site operates. That means your browser contacts OpenStreetMap's own servers directly to load the map, and that request can carry the same ordinary information any request to any external website carries — your IP address, basic browser details, and the page you were on when it was made. This site doesn't add any tracking, analytics, or cookie of its own to that request; it's simply what loading an external map tile means, governed entirely by OpenStreetMap's own Tile Usage Policy, not this project's. The map never loads before you visit a page that has one, and every location is also listed as plain text and cards alongside the map — fully usable, with the same filters and status information, if you'd rather not load it at all.

Spotted something wrong?

If something on this site looks outdated or incorrect, the most reliable fix is the same one this site asks of every visitor: go straight to the official source linked on the record itself, or to Regulations & Safety, rather than relying on this site alone for anything that affects a legal harvest or your safety on the water. If you'd also like to flag it here: