Gascoyne Marine Park is valued for its regionally important seafloor features. This includes the nationally unique Exmouth Plateau which is believed to modify deep-water flow and be associated with the generation of internal tides, bringing cooler and more nutrient-rich waters to the surface. Here, these nutrients help in supporting continental slope demersal fish communities that are among the most diverse known in Australia.

The park is located 20 kilometres off the west coast of the Cape Range Peninsula, immediately adjacent to the Ningaloo Marine Park. It covers 81,766 square kilometres and has National Park, Habitat Protection and Multiple Use zones. – Parks Australia

Gascoyne ranges from 31 to 5,696 metres depth, with an average depth of 3,327 metres. The majority of the park (51%) falls within the abyssal zone (4,000-6,000 metres) [view on map]. The mapped areas of the seafloor are dominated by Plane (53%) and Slope (23%) morphological features [view on map].

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

• Mesophotic: no public annotations available
• Rariphotic to Upper-slope: no public imagery available
• Mid-slope: bioturbators (39%), invertebrates (36%), non-coral cnidaria (9%), sponges (5%), unidentified biota (3%)
• Lower-slope: bioturbators (41%), invertebrates (26%), sponges (20%), ascidians (4%), non-coral cnidaria (3%)
• Abyss: sponges (91%), seagrass (wrack) (3%), non-coral cnidaria (1%), unidentified (1%), bioturbators (1%)