Australian Maritime Boundaries 2020: Territorial Sea Baselines and Jurisdictional Limits

Geoscience Australia's 2020 digital representation of Australia's territorial sea baselines and the outer limits of its maritime zones, including boundaries with neighboring countries. The data covers Australia's entire marine jurisdiction from latitudes 7°S to 70°S and longitudes 40°E to 175°E, incorporating external territories. This product, developed under the Seas and Submerged Lands Act 1973, supersedes the 2014a version and is provided in GDA94 datum.

Use Cases

• Mapping maritime jurisdictional zones for legal or administrative purposes based on the defined territorial straight baselines and outer limits.
• Analyzing offshore petroleum and greenhouse gas storage areas under the OPGGSA 2006 based on the represented scheduled and offshore area limits.
• Visualizing international maritime boundaries determined by treaties between Australia and neighboring countries.
• Determining state and Northern Territory coastal waters under the Coastal Waters Acts based on the included limits representation.

Strengths

• Official data product from Geoscience Australia, developed in consultation with key Commonwealth agencies like the Attorney-General's Department.
• Explicitly states its currency is December 2020, providing a clear temporal reference point.
• Covers a vast geographical extent, approximately from 7°S to 70°S and 40°E to 175°E, including all external territories.

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality, schema, and completeness require manual inspection after download.
• The data disclaimer notes that in any inconsistency with legislative limits, the legislation prevails, indicating potential positional discrepancies.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics and data structure must be inferred after download.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia

Collection Method

Delineation of maritime limits and boundaries under Australian legislation, with consultation from other government departments.

Time Range

Currency: December 2020.

Freshness

Last updated 2026 03 25 17:02:03.145973; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Australia including all external territories, waters adjacent to the mainland, and offshore islands.