Tasman Fracture Marine Park lies off the south-west corner of Tasmania, complementing the Port Davey Marine Reserve which was proclaimed in 2005 by the Tasmanian Government. The park is scored by steep canyons, and encloses other geological features including steep escarpments, troughs, saddles, basins, seamounts and part of a plateau that is over 400 kilometres long and rises three kilometres above the seafloor. These features host spectacular deep-water coral communities, providing habitat for a rich diversity of marine invertebrates and fish species.

Tasman Fracture Marine Park protects waters near to Mewstone, a rocky island which is is home to the world’s largest colony of shy albatross. These seabirds are a threatened species, and breed only in Tasmania. Tasman Fracture’s waters are also home to many other species of seabirds, seals and cetaceans such as dolphins and killer whales.

The park covers 42,501 square kilometres and has National Park, Special Purpose and Multiple Use zones. – Parks Australia

Tasman Fracture ranges from 60 to 5,559 metres depth, with an average depth of 3,437 metres. The majority of the Park (49%) falls within the lower-slope zone (2,000-4,000 metres) [view on map]. The mapped areas of the seafloor are dominated by Slope (37%) and Plane (17%) 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: no public imagery available
• Rariphotic: sand (71%), mixed invertebrate community (13%), mixed coarse sediments (8%), sponges (4%), coral biota (1%)
• Upper-slope: no public annotations available
• Mid-slope: consolidated hard substrata (47%), sand (27%), mixed coarse sediments (20%), coral biota (2%), boulder (1%)
• Lower-slope to Abyss: no public imagery available

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