Kimberley Marine Park
In December 2016, the North Kimberley Marine Park was gazetted. It covered 6,600 square kilometres. The announcement immediately generated 17,000 public submissions — an extraordinary number for a marine protected area in one of Australia's most sparsely populated regions. The submissions came from recreational fishers, from Aboriginal communities, from conservation groups, and from commercial operators. They disagreed sharply on who had the right to fish these waters, and in what quantities. A revised plan followed in November 2021. The argument continues. It is, at its core, an argument about what these waters are for.
The Scale of It
The Kimberley Marine Park — proclaimed under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act in 2013 — covers 74,469 square kilometres of water off the coast of Western Australia. It is one of thirteen parks managed under the North-west Marine Parks Network, which stretches along Australia's northwestern continental shelf from the Torres Strait to the edge of the Southern Ocean.
The park spans depths from less than 15 metres to 800 metres, crossing multiple bioregional boundaries: the Northwest Shelf Transition, the Northwest Shelf Province, and the Timor Province, along with the Kimberley, Canning, Northwest Shelf, and Oceanic Shoals meso-scale bioregions. Continental shelf, slope, plateau, pinnacles, terraces, banks, shoals, and deep valleys are all represented within its boundaries. IUCN category VI permits sustainable use, which is why the fishing rights debate has been so intense.
What Lives Here
The Kimberley coast hosts one of the most biologically significant stretches of water in Australia. Humpback whales use the warm, sheltered bays of the Kimberley as nursery grounds — migrating from Antarctica to calve in the protected inlets before returning south. The marine park protects their migration pathway as well as their breeding habitat. Dugongs forage along the coastal shallows. Green turtles nest on the islands. Marine turtles of several threatened species pass through.
The continental slope here contains the second-richest demersal fish communities in Australia. An ancient submerged coastline — a relic of the last ice age, when sea levels were far lower — creates an area of enhanced productivity where bait fish concentrate and attract larger predatory species. Sawfish, listed as protected throughout Australia, have important foraging and pupping areas adjacent to the park. The ecological argument for protection is strong.
Whose Waters
The Kimberley coast has been Aboriginal country for tens of thousands of years. The marine parks being created across the region are designed with this in mind. The Bardi Jawi Marine Park, proposed for Bardi Jawi country on the Dampier Peninsula, would protect waters that the Bardi and Jawi peoples have managed and fished since long before the concept of a marine park existed. The Lalang-gaddam Marine Park — in planning under its former name, the Great Kimberley Marine Park — will cover Dambimangari waters and includes the Lalang-garram/Camden Sound and Lalang-garram/Horizontal Falls parks already gazetted.
The Maiyalam Marine Park, gazetted in 2020 and 2021, covers the Buccaneer Archipelago. Co-designed with traditional owners and the state government, it represents a model of joint management that is becoming standard across the Kimberley. The debate about recreational fishing access that generated 17,000 submissions in 2016 is partly a debate about what kind of management that joint model entails — who decides, and on whose terms, what can be taken from these waters.
From the Air
The Kimberley Marine Park is centred at approximately 15.28°S, 122.98°E, extending north and west from the Kimberley coast. From altitude, the transition from the red and ochre coastal cliffs to the turquoise shallows over the continental shelf is dramatic. The park encompasses the waters around the Buccaneer Archipelago and the Dampier Peninsula. Horizontal Falls — one of the world's most unusual tidal phenomena — lies within the Lalang-garram/Horizontal Falls Marine Park to the south. The nearest aerodromes are Derby (YDBY) to the southeast and Broome (YBRM) to the southwest.