Flinders Marine Park extends over 400 kilometres east of the north-east tip of Tasmania and Flinders Island. Key features of the marine park are the continental shelf and a long section of steep continental slope incised by a series of deep submarine canyons. Seafloor habitats in these areas include sheer rocky walls and large rocky outcrops that support a rich diversity of small seabed animals such as lace corals and sponges. These, alongside the large expanses of sandy and muddy sediments, are habitats to a variety of mobile fishes, and also to populations of giant crabs. Areas between 400 and 600 metres deep on the continental slope are also habitat for dogfish and gulper shark. The endangered deep-water shark, commonly known as the Harrisons dogfish, has been recorded here.

The park is situated to the east of Flinders Island covering 27,043 square kilometres. It has National Park and Multiple Use zones. – Parks Australia

Flinders ranges from 34 to 5,041 metres depth, with an average depth of 4,221 metres. The majority of the Park (87%) falls within the abyssal zone (4,000-6,000 metres) [view on map]. The mapped areas of the seafloor are dominated by Plane (46%) and Slope (15%) morphological features. Seamounts/Guyots have been mapped in this park [view on map].

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

• Mesophotic: sand (50%), mixed invertebrate community (30%), sponges (11%), mixed coarse sediments (4%), bryozoans (2%)
• Rariphotic: sand (62%), mixed invertebrate community (22%), sponges (9%), mixed coarse sediments (4%), bryozoans (2%)
• Upper-slope: no public annotations available
• Mid slope to Abyss: no public imagery available

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