THE NORTH MARINE REGION
The North Marine Region comprises all Commonwealth waters from the western side of Cape York to the Northern Territory-Western Australian border, and shares international borders with Indonesia, Timor Leste and Papua New Guinea.
The Region includes eight marine parks — Joseph Bonaparte Gulf, Oceanic Shoals, Arafura, Arnhem, Wessel, Limmen, Gulf of Carpentaria, and West Cape York — collectively spanning 157,480 square kilometres. Each park contains at least one of the many unique tropical ecosystems and associated marine life found in the Region. The parks also support tourism, commercial fishing, mining and shipping activities vital to the economies and welfare of remote coastal towns and Indigenous communities.
“Estuaries and rivers contain sawfish and juvenile sharks that move offshore as they mature”
ANCIENT HISTORY
The physical structure of the North Marine Region is the product of geological changes that began about 10–15 million years ago when the north-moving Australian continent collided with the Pacific Plate. This impact lifted the earth’s crust and generated volcanic activity that led to the creation of New Guinea. Much of the Region’s present seabed topography was shaped over 150,000 years when it was above sea level and exposed to the erosive elements of wind, rain and the passage of rivers across its gently-sloping terrain.
Australia’s continental shelf formed a continuous land bridge with New Guinea enabling the movement of plants and animals between them. As the last Ice Age began to thaw, about 18,000 years ago, rising seas gradually drowned the shelf, connecting the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
The Region’s seafloor now contains a variety of physical features that support distinctive and important ecological communities — a wide, relatively
