There are eight Australian Marine Parks off the coast of New South Wales, making up the Temperate East Marine Parks Network. Here you’ll find important offshore reef habitat around Elizabeth and Middleton reefs, and the internationally-renowned tourism destinations Norfolk Island and Lord Howe Island. These marine parks cover 383,339 square kilometres, and are rich with coral, crustaceans, echinoderms, molluscs and sea sponges. They support the vulnerable black cod, marine turtle and bony fish, as well as being important breeding grounds for seabirds. Migratory humpback whales make their way through the region annually on their way to breeding grounds in Queensland. – Parks Australia

The Temperate East Network spans the shallow (<30 metres) to abyssal (4,000-6,000 metres) depth zones, with the majority of the Network (49%) falling within the lower-slope zone (2,000-4,000 metres) [view on map].

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

• Shallow: macroalgae (34%), sand (29%), coral biota (27%), bacterial mat (3%), other (3%)
• Mesophotic: macroalgae (41%), sand (21%), sponges (11%), bacterial mat (8%), coral biota (6%)
• Rariphotic: macroalgae (50%), sand (22%), bacterial mat (12%), mixed invertebrate community (8%), coral biota (4%)
• Upper-slope to Abyss: no public imagery available