Web service for Commonwealth Marine Regions. Commonwealth Marine Planning Regions are areas within australian waters for which Marine Bioregional Plans will be established under section 176 of the commonwealth EPBC Act.

Consistent with the Australian Government's commitment to develop a National Representative System of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), networks of Commonwealth Marine Reserves have been proclaimed for Commonwealth waters across the South-west, North-west, North, Coral Sea and Temperate East Marine Regions. These networks build on previous Marine Protected Area proclamations, including the South-east network declared in 2007.\n\nThis dataset is released under Creative Commons by Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Australia (CC BY-NC 3.0).\n\nIMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR MARINE USERS\nTransitional arrangements apply to the South-west, North-west, North and Temperate East Networks and the Coral Sea reserve, until management plans come into effect. These arrangements involve NO CHANGES ON THE WATER for marine users. Note, there are no changes to management arrangements in the marine reserves that existed prior to the establishment of the new reserves, that is, the same restrictions on activities will continue to apply even where those reserves have been incorporated into new reserves. The South-east Network of Commonwealth Marine Reserves is managed under the South-east Commonwealth Marine Reserves Network Management Plan 2013-23, in place from 1 July 2013. More information is available at www.environment.gov.au/marinereserves \n\nThis data contains spatial and contextual information about Commonwealth Marine Reserves under the jurisdiction of the Commonwealth governments Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, which are managed by the Australian Government Department of the Environment. It does not include data on MPA's in other Australian jurisdictions (e.g. the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, State/Territory parks), or Terrestrial Protected Areas with marine components (eg Pulu Keeling National Park).

Three marine spatial planning areas are delineated in Eastern Canada to define the spatial extents of marine spatial plans being led by Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO): the Estuary and Gulf of St. Lawrence (EGSL), the Newfoundland and Labrador (NL) Shelves, and the Scotian Shelf and Bay of Fundy. The EGSL planning area includes the St. Lawrence River estuary from northeast of Île d’Orléans, Quebec, the Saguenay River estuary, and the entire Gulf of St. Lawrence as far north as the Strait of Belle Isle (NAFO Divisions 4RST). The NL Shelves planning area includes areas off southern, eastern and northern Newfoundland, part of the Churchill River and Lake Melville, as well as off the Labrador coast to the extent of the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) (NAFO Divisions 2GHJ and 3KLNOP). The Scotian Shelf and Bay of Fundy planning area includes DFO Maritimes’ administrative region off the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia to the extent of the EEZ, the Bay of Fundy and the Canadian portion of the Gulf of Maine (NAFO Divisions 4VWX, 5Ze, and the Canadian portion of 5Y). The French EEZ for St. Pierre et Miquelon is excluded from the three planning areas. These planning areas are derived from Federal Marine Bioregions (https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/23eb8b56-dac8-4efc-be7c-b8fa11ba62e9) that were developed by a Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat process using ecosystem-based management principles to define 13 ecological bioregions that have informed but not directed DFO implementation of marine spatial planning.

This dataset is comprised of the spatial boundaries for the Port Hawkesbury and Saint John pilot areas within the Oceans Protection Plan - Area Response Plan (ARP) project.

This dataset is a simplified version of the Australian Marine Parks dataset. It shows only the outer boundaries of the parks and does not include zoning. This data contains spatial and contextual information about Australian Marine Parks proclaimed under the Commonwealth Government's Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, which are managed by Parks Australia, with the addition of Heard Island and McDonald Islands Marine Reserve, which is managed by the Australian Antarctic Division. The Australian Marine Parks include the North, North-west, South-west, South-east and Temperate East Networks, the Coral Sea Marine Park, and the Indian Ocean Territories Marine Parks. These parks were established in Commonwealth waters consistent with the Australian Government’s commitment to develop a National Representative System of Marine Protected Areas. This dataset does not include data on marine protected areas in other Australian jurisdictions (e.g. the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, State/Territory marine parks), or terrestrial protected areas with marine components (e.g. Pulu Keeling National Park). More information can be found at https://parksaustralia.gov.au/marine Since this dataset was originally published in 2018 there have been the following updates: 1. A technical amendment was made on the basis of user feedback (April 30th 2019). Macquarie Island was the only marine park affected by this amendment. The area calculation for Macquarie Island Marine Park was previously under reported by 483km2. This will have affected statistical analyses that used the calculated area (KM2) as an input. This amendment is superseded by item 4 below. 2. A zoning boundary error identified at West Island in Ashmore Reef Marine Park was corrected (March 2022). 3. Two new Australian Marine Parks were added to this dataset in March 2022; Christmas Island Marine Park and Cocos (Keeling) Islands Marine Park. 4. The addition of the expanded Macquarie Island Marine Park which came into effect on 1 July 2023, replacing the boundaries of the original marine park proclaimed in 1999. 5. The expanded Heard Island and McDonald Islands Marine Reserve took effect on 24 January 2025. 6. The South-east Marine Parks zoning updates under the new management plan came into effect on 13 February 2025.

A regionalisation of Australian waters (excluding waters adjacent to the Territory of Heard Island and McDonald Islands, and waters adjacent to the Australian Antarctic Territory) derived from deep-water demersal fish assemblages. A total of 41 onshelf and offshelf provincial bioregions were identified for IMCRA v4.0.Onshelf provincial bioregions are based on the 17 IMCRA v3.3 demersal provinces and biotones identified in 1997.Offshelf provincial bioregions were defined in 2004 as part of a program run by Geoscience Australia, CSIRO Marine Research and the National Oceans Office. They represent units that contain broad patterns in biodiversity, as represented by deep-water demersal fish assemblages, based on the assumption that the demersal fish distributions are a surrogate of marine faunal distributions. Below 2,000 m water depth, the boundaries of the benthic provincial bioregions are defined solely by the NMB (National Marine Bioregionalisation) geomorphic features data set. A total of 24 offshelf benthic provincial bioregions were defined on this basis, including 15 core bioregions representing areas of endemism, and 9 transition zones representing areas of faunal mixing.For IMCRA v4.0 the coastline was replaced with the national 100k coastline to provide greater consistency. The Australian EEZ limit was sourced from AMB v2. Based on a decision by the Bioregionalisation Working Group, the shelf break from IMCRA v3.3 was largely retained, although in some instances the shelf break from the NMB (National Marine Bioregionalisation) provincial bioregions was used.

The Marine Nature Reserve dataset includes areas of Tasmanian State Waters that have been defined as Marine Nature Reserves by the Tasmanian Fisheries Rules 1999. Where part of the Reserve allows restricted fishing, a separate region is created for that part with a note in the Comment field of "Restricted Take". All other Marine Nature Reserves prohibit fishing. Refer to Fisheries Rules 1999 (SR158 of 1999) for details. The Marine Nature Reserves contained within this dataset are: Governor Island Marine Nature Reserve, Maria Island Marine Nature Reserve, Ninepin Point Marine Nature Reserve, Tinderbox Marine Nature Reserve, Kent Group Marine Nature Reserve, Port Davey/Bathurst Harbour Marine Nature Reserve.

A regionalisation of Australian waters (excluding waters adjacent to the Territory of Heard Island and McDonald Islands, and waters adjacent to the Australian Antarctic Territory) derived from deep-water demersal fish assemblages. A total of 41 onshelf and offshelf provincial bioregions were identified for IMCRA v4.0. Onshelf provincial bioregions are based on the 17 IMCRA v3.3 demersal provinces and biotones identified in 1997. Offshelf provincial bioregions were defined in 2004 as part of a program run by Geoscience Australia, CSIRO Marine Research and the National Oceans Office. They represent units that contain broad patterns in biodiversity, as represented by deep-water demersal fish assemblages, based on the assumption that the demersal fish distributions are a surrogate of marine faunal distributions. Below 2,000 m water depth, the boundaries of the benthic provincial bioregions are defined solely by the NMB (National Marine Bioregionalisation) geomorphic features data set. A total of 24 offshelf benthic provincial bioregions were defined on this basis, including 15 core bioregions representing areas of endemism, and 9 transition zones representing areas of faunal mixing. For IMCRA v4.0 the coastline was replaced with the national 100k coastline to provide greater consistency. The Australian EEZ limit was sourced from AMB v2. Based on a decision by the Bioregionalisation Working Group, the shelf break from IMCRA v3.3 was largely retained, although in some instances the shelf break from the NMB (National Marine Bioregionalisation) provincial bioregions was used.