Although named after a sailing ship (the Beagle, which brought Charles Darwin to Australian waters in 1836), the Beagle Marine Park was once dry land which made up part of a land bridge to Tasmania. Indigenous people lived in this area and travelled along the land bridge. As the last ice-age ended (about 10,000 years ago), glaciers melted and sea levels rose, isolating Tasmania.

Beagle is a shallow-water marine park surrounding a collection of Bass Strait Islands. Habitats within Beagle Marine Park are believed to be representative of the central Bass Strait, which are diverse benthic communities and include reefs supporting encrusting, erect and branching sponges. This marine park provides important foraging grounds for pygmy blue whales and nearby breeding colonies of seabirds, and the rich marine life it contains attracts top predators such as the great white shark and orcas.

Beagle lies in the Bass Strait between Wilsons Promontory and Flinders Island and covers 2,928 square kilometres. It is a Multiple Use zone. – Parks Australia

Beagle ranges from 46 to 77 metres depth, with an average depth of 64 metres. The majority of the Park (80%) falls within the mesophotic zone (30-70 metres) [view on map]. The mapped area of the seafloor are dominated by Plane (92%) and Apron (4%) 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: sand (64%), mixed coarse sediments (12%), mixed invertebrate community (6%), sponges (6%), other shelled biota (5%)
• Rariphotic: no public imagery available

Read more about the Beagle State of Knowledge (Parks Australia).