Oceanic Shoals Marine Park is the largest of the marine parks in the North Network. It represents an important habitat for threatened marine turtles such as the flatback, olive ridley, and loggerhead turtles, and contains four Key Ecological Features that contribute to the enhanced productivity and high biodiversity observed in this area. This includes the Pinnacles of the Bonaparte Basin, an area that contains the largest concentration of pinnacles along the Australian margin where local upwellings of nutrient rich water attract aggregations of fish and seabirds.

The park lies to the west of the Tiwi Islands, about 150 kilometres north-west of Darwin. It covers 71,743 square kilometres, and has National Park, Habitat Protection, Multiple Use and Special Purpose (Trawl) zones. While some types of commercial fishing are allowed in the Habitat Protection Zone, others are restricted in order to protect important habitats. – Parks Australia

Oceanic Shoals ranges from less than 5 to 249 metres depth, with an average depth of 87 metres. The majority of the Park (71%) falls within the rariphotic zone (70-200 metres) [view on map].

Based on annotations from publicly available seafloor imagery (Squidle+), the five most dominant seafloor categories in this Park are:

• Shallow: macroalgae (72%), coral biota (13%), sand (7%), unconsolidated hard substrata (5%), sponges (2%)
• Mesophotic to Upper-slope: no public imagery available