South-west Corner Marine Park Bathymetry Survey, 2020-2021

March 2020 and January-February 2021 bathymetry data for the South-west Corner Marine Park, collected by Geoscience Australia. The survey covers 330 km^2 offshore from Cape Naturaliste to Cape Leeuwin, producing a 5-meter resolution geotiff from processed multibeam sonar. It was funded by the National Environmental Science Program Marine Biodiversity Hub and partners to build baseline information for benthic habitats.

Use Cases

• Modeling seabed terrain and slope based on high-resolution bathymetry data.
• Establishing environmental baselines for marine park management plans based on the described survey purpose.
• Integrating bathymetric layers with separate benthic imagery datasets for habitat mapping.

Strengths

• Covers a specific 330 km^2 area within a designated marine park.
• Provides high-resolution 5-meter bathymetry data derived from a Kongsberg EM2040C multibeam sonar system.
• Survey was conducted during two dedicated periods in 2020 and 2021.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The dataset is explicitly not to be used for navigational purposes.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia, in collaboration with the University of Western Australia, University of Tasmania, and the Australian Centre for Field Robotics.

Collection Method

Data acquired via multibeam bathymetry from the charter vessel Santosha, processed using CARIS HIPS and SIPS software.

Time Range

9 – 12 March 2020 and 27 January – 16 February 2021

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-04 07:27:50.828523; freshness should be verified.

Geography

South-west Corner Marine Park, offshore from Cape Naturaliste to Cape Leeuwin, Western Australia.