Arafura Marine Park is Australia’s most northerly marine park. Within its boundaries lie multiple tributary canyons of the Arafura Depression – remnants of an ancient drowned river system. These steep-walled canyons create a diversity of substrate types, and funnel nutrient-rich waters upward from the deep ocean which enhance productivity and support complex ecosystems, including populations of large predatory fish, whale sharks, deep sea sponges, seabirds and marine turtles.

The park is located 256 kilometres north-west of Darwin, abutting Australia’s Exclusive Economic Zone boundary near Indonesia, with which Australia has signed a Joint Declaration on Maritime Cooperation. It covers 22,924 square kilometres and has Multiple Use, Special Purpose and Special Purpose (Trawl) zones. – Parks Australia

Arafura ranges from less than 5 to 277 metres depth, with an average depth of 120 metres.  The majority of the park (87%) 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 (40%), coral biota (23%), unconsolidated hard substrata (19%), sand (7%), non-coral cnidaria (3%)
• Mesophotic to Upper-slope: no public imagery available