Bathymetry Compilation for Proposed Marine Protected Areas in East Antarctica

The Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) has developed a proposal for the establishment of seven Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) located around east Antarctica for the purposes of marine ecosystem conservation. As seafloor morphology is a key component of marine ecosystems, this bathymetry compilation for the proposed MPAs was produced to support the AAD proposal. All bathymetry data available to Geoscience Australia at the time of compilation were used. This included multibeam and singlebeam acoustic data which were verified and processed to ensure the data were as accurate as possible. Processing included sound velocity corrections, navigation verification and the rejection of erroneous data points. Once processed, the data were gridded to 100m resolution and projected into suitable WGS84 UTM zones. The gridded data was exported into several formats to facilitate ease of use. The formats include xyz files, ESRI rasters, geoTIFs, CARISTM image files and soundings. The data and the technical report are available for download from URLs below.