Australia's Maritime Zones Edition 4: Territorial Sea and Continental Shelf Limits

Edition 4, published in 2013, supersedes the 2006 Edition 3 map. This map is a digital representation derived from Geoscience Australia's Australian Maritime Boundaries (AMB) version 2.0 data, depicting Australia's territorial sea baseline, maritime limits, and boundaries as established under the Sea and Submerged Lands Act 1973. It includes continental shelf limits confirmed in 2008 and lists boundary arrangements with Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, France, and New Zealand.

Use Cases

• Mapping territorial sea extents based on the legally defined baseline.
• Analyzing continental shelf limits, including resolved and unresolved areas.
• Studying international maritime boundary agreements with neighboring countries.
• Visualizing the geographic scope of Australia's maritime jurisdiction from Heard Island to Norfolk Island.

Strengths

• Derived from authoritative Geoscience Australia AMB version 2.0 data.
• Includes continental shelf limits confirmed by the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf on 9 April 2008.
• Lists specific maritime boundary arrangements with five neighboring countries and territories.

Limitations

• Data is presented as a static PDF/HTML map; underlying vector or tabular data is not described.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Last updated metadata is 2026-05-05; the core data currency is 2013, which may not reflect recent changes.

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network, derived from Geoscience Australia's Australian Maritime Boundaries (AMB) version 2.0.

Collection Method

Digital representation of legal boundaries established under the Sea and Submerged Lands Act 1973.

Freshness

2013 (web map)

Geography

Australia, extending from Heard and McDonald Islands to Norfolk Island, and from the Torres Strait to the Australian Antarctic Territory.