ok gimil asked me how i did the gulfs border wel here is a minitut
1, i made the continents in illustrator
2, i make all borders in illustrator ( i think its a 2 pixel brush thoough it could be something in close)
back in photoshop:
3, i give the border a outer glow of white with noise set on overlay
4, i do an apply image blur it a couple of times and set the layer to darken
hope you liked it and learned something