GSHHSFeature not plotting part of the Delaware River

[lgarzio]

Description

When using cartopy.feature.GSHHSFeature() for plotting higher resolution coastlines, part of the Delaware River in New Jersey (and other rivers, i.e. NY, Chesapeake Bay) are missing in the map (below). The rivers are accurately depicted using cartopy.feature.NaturalEarthFeature() (line commented out in the code below, map below).

I'm getting the warnings noted in issue #1659, but no other warnings or errors:

"Possible issue encountered when converting Shape # 95 to GeoJSON: Shapefile format requires that polygons contain at least one exterior ring, but the Shape was entirely made up of interior holes (defined by counter-clockwise orientation in the shapefile format). The rings were still included but were encoded as GeoJSON exterior rings instead of holes."

Code to reproduce

import cartopy.crs as ccrs
import cartopy.feature as cfeature
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

extent = [-77, -72, 38, 41.5]
ecolor = 'k'
fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(11, 8), subplot_kw=dict(projection=ccrs.Mercator()))
ax.set_extent(extent)
gl = ax.gridlines(draw_labels=True, linewidth=1, color='gray', alpha=0.5, linestyle='dotted', x_inline=False)
ax.set_facecolor(cfeature.COLORS['water'])

land = cfeature.GSHHSFeature()
#land = cfeature.NaturalEarthFeature('physical', 'land', '10m')
ax.add_feature(land, facecolor='tan', edgecolor=ecolor)

state_lines = cfeature.NaturalEarthFeature(
        category='cultural',
        name='admin_1_states_provinces_lines',
        scale='10m',
        facecolor='none')

ax.add_feature(cfeature.BORDERS, edgecolor=ecolor)
ax.add_feature(state_lines, edgecolor=ecolor)

Packages

cartopy 0.20.3
matplotlib 3.5.2
pyshp 2.3.0
scipy 1.8.1
shapely 1.8.2

Example plots

GSHHSFeature()

NaturalEarthFeature()

[dopplershift]

Are we sure those features are actually present in the GSHHS dataset?

[greglucas]

My goto solution is try installing Fiona, it seems to be more robust about handling shapefiles than pyshp. pip install fiona and try plotting again.

[lgarzio]

I tried installing fiona (v 1.8.21) and ran the code again and got the same result (minus the pyshp errors)

[seagrinch]

@lgarzio Looks like the Delaware river polygon may have been fixed in the underlying GSHHS dataset? That said, when running your example there are still a few shapefile errors, so it's still probably not perfect everywhere.