Scuba Divers Federation of South Australia
Marine Parks and protected areas in South Australia

SDFSA supports Marine Parks as important to the propagation and protection of marine life and the conservation and regeneration of habitat. SDFSA monitors State and Federal initiatives to protect the marine environment. Rules for South Australia’s current Marine Parks, including maps and permit information can be found at

www.environment.sa.gov.au/marineparks/home

The UN Convention on Biological Diversity has set as a target 10 percent protection of the world’s oceans by 2020. The IUCN World Parks Congress in 2014 recommended a target of at least 30% in order to protect biodiversity and fish stocks. At present only 6% of global oceans is set aside in marine protected areas. (Read more here).

Australia has a marine estate of 8.2 million km2 and 60,000km of coastline. In 2012, Australia designated 36% or 2.4 million km2 as marine parks, one of the world’s largest networks of marine parks. In 2017, the protections for those parks were significantly reduced, including allowing commercial fishing in a significant percentage of the parks.