Australian Maritime Boundaries 2020: Territorial Sea Baselines and Jurisdictional Limits

Geoscience Australia delineates Australia's domestic and international maritime limits and boundaries. The Australian Maritime Boundaries (AMB) 2020 data is a digital representation of territorial sea baselines, outer limits of maritime zones, and state/Territory powers limits, replacing the 2014a version. Coverage includes the entire Australian marine jurisdiction, from latitudes 7°S to 70°S and longitudes 40°E to 175°E, with coordinates in the GDA94 datum.

Use Cases

• Mapping territorial sea baselines and exclusive economic zones based on the digital representation of limits under the Seas and Submerged Lands Act 1973.
• Determining state and Northern Territory coastal waters jurisdiction for resource management based on limits from the Coastal Waters Acts and the Offshore Petroleum Act.
• Visualizing maritime boundaries established by treaties with neighboring countries based on the included boundary data.
• Analyzing the spatial extent of Australia's maritime jurisdiction for legal or environmental assessments based on the defined geographical coverage.

Strengths

• Official data product developed by Geoscience Australia in consultation with key Commonwealth agencies like the Attorney-General's Department.
• Explicitly states currency as December 2020, providing a clear temporal reference for the boundaries.
• Defines a broad geographical coverage from 7°S to 70°S and 40°E to 175°E, encompassing mainland and external territories.

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality, schema, and column definitions require manual inspection after download.
• The data reflects coastline location within constraints of source material available at production time, which may introduce positional inaccuracies.
• A legal disclaimer states that in any inconsistency, the limits under the legislation prevail over the digital data.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia, via the Australian Ocean Data Network.

Collection Method

Delineation and digital representation of legal limits and boundaries.

Time Range

Currency: December 2020.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-10 21:47:40.629919; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Australian marine jurisdiction, including mainland, offshore islands, and External Territories.