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

Edition 5 of Australia's Maritime Zones map supersedes the 2013 edition. The map is derived from Geoscience Australia's Australian Maritime Boundaries 2014 data, representing the territorial sea baseline and limits 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

• Visualizing Australia's maritime jurisdiction based on the described territorial sea baseline and limits.
• Analyzing international maritime boundary agreements based on the listed arrangements with neighboring countries.
• Mapping the extent of Australia's continental shelf based on the 2008 confirmed limits and unresolved areas.
• Studying the geographic scope of maritime zones stretching from Heard and McDonald Islands to Norfolk Island and the Australian Antarctic Territory.

Strengths

• Based on the authoritative Australian Maritime Boundaries 2014 data from Geoscience Australia.
• 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

• 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 primary deliverable is a PDF map, which may limit machine-readability and analysis compared to raw geospatial data formats.

Provenance

Source

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

Collection Method

Derived from digital representations of legal maritime limits and boundaries.

Time Range

Data currency is 2014.

Freshness

Currency is listed as 2014; last metadata update was 2026-06-05.

Geography

Coverage is Australia, including its external territories and maritime zones.