Australia's Maritime Zones and Continental Shelf Limits, 2014 Edition

Geoscience Australia's official map depicts Australia's maritime zones and boundaries as established under the Sea and Submerged Lands Act 1973. The fifth edition, published in 2014, incorporates the confirmed continental shelf limits from 2008 and shows unresolved areas. It details maritime boundary arrangements with neighboring countries and territories, covering from Heard and McDonald Islands to Norfolk Island and the Australian Antarctic Territory.

Use Cases

• Visualizing national maritime jurisdiction for legal and policy analysis based on the described zones and boundaries.
• Studying international maritime boundary agreements based on the listed arrangements with Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and others.
• Analyzing the extent of Australia's continental shelf based on the 2008 confirmed limits and unresolved areas shown on the map.

Strengths

• Derived from the authoritative Australian Maritime Boundaries (AMB) 2014 digital data from Geoscience Australia.
• Incorporates the continental shelf limits confirmed by the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf on 9 April 2008.
• Explicitly lists maritime boundary arrangements with five neighboring countries and territories.

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• The underlying data is from 2014; boundaries may have been updated since publication.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia Data

Collection Method

Derived from Geoscience Australia's Australian Maritime Boundaries (AMB) 2014 digital data.

Time Range

Boundaries current as of 2014, incorporating a 2008 continental shelf confirmation.

Freshness

Currency is listed as 2014; last platform update was 2026-04-20.

Geography

Australia and its maritime zones, including external territories and Antarctic claim.