Talk:Great Australian Bight

Ocean name(s)
Adelaidians (?) and Australians, perhaps unfortunately due to the common usage on Australian maps, no more "get to decide" the name of the oceans of the world than do the people of, say, Chile, who refuse to use "Pacific" and have their own name for it on all their maps. The group that does is the IHO (see the WP Southern Ocean article for references....the Adelaide article should not be cluttered with IHO references, I should think!).
 * For good or bad (bad if you're a fan of Australian maps and terminology), they have decided that Australia is a continent sitting in the Indian Ocean, with the Pacific along its eastern side. They publish this with carefully delineated borders for these water bodies (see that mentioned in the WP Great Australian Bight article.  So, certainly not for Australian use, but for a worldwide English enclopedia, its "Indian Ocean", not "Southern Ocean."  The IHO very clearly ruled (after a vote of member nations) that the "Southern Ocean" stops at 60 degrees south, and north of that its the Indian Ocean.  Not debatable, unless you want to try to overturn the worldwide and WP-wide acceptance of the IHO as the authority on these matters.  Water bodies that Australia does not share with other nations are a different matter, of course.  This is how world geographers (and the IHO) avoid having several names for various sides of various oceans.  Having done the South Coast Track in Tasmania and looking southwest off the cliffs (an amazing place;  huge old growth trees, remote beaches) and saying something to a local about the big Indian Ocean waves and getting an incredulous stare, I know this doesn't make sense locally.....But it's an international encyclopedia.DLinth 18:50, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

The article says: "The International Hydrographic Organization defines the Great Australian Bight as part of the southeastern Indian Ocean, with the following limits:". I can't see any place in that document that specifies it as part of the Indian Ocean. Horatio (talk) 03:15, 30 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, it seems to imply that it is part of the South Pacific, but it's not very clear. But why do we need to mention the ocean at all? Why not stop all this hand-wringing and just say that it is a waterbody to the south of Australia? Bazonka (talk) 06:50, 30 May 2013 (UTC)
 * It's pure trivia. But it's interesting that such a simple question doesn't have a simple answer. It's the job of an encyclopedia to answer trivial questions, even if the answer is that "it depends." Horatio (talk) 09:07, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Layout problem
As an amateur I cannot cleanup this page but the photo entitled "The Great Australian Bight south of the Nullarbor. Credit Jacques Descloitres, Visible Earth, NASA." overlaps the text. It would be a minor improvement if this could be adjusted. Sorry that I can't do it myself. Rudimills (talk) 23:24, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Conflicting Statments
I am a new account holder and have chosen the talk pages instead of the sand box. In the Natrual History section of this article the Great Australian Bite is described as a marine desert: "In consequence, the Great Australian Bight receives very little of the runoff that fertilises most continental shelves and is essentially a marine desert.". The next section in the article is Current conditions and states "Economically, the Bight has been exploited over many years as part of the fishing, whaling and shellfish industries. Bluefin tuna have been a favoured target of fishing in the Bight.". Which is correct? Maybe it should read that the continental shelf is concidered a marine deset due to ...very little runoff... A related web page News.com.au presented and article dated April 15 2011; 'BP to search Great Austrailan Bight'. In that article Conservation Council of SA chief executive Tim Kelly said the Great Australian Bight had the greatest diversity of marine life anywhere in the world, with up to 90 per cent of the marine life found nowhere else.The Australian Southern Bluefin Tuna Industry Association president Brian Jeffriess said "We want them to do the seismic surveys outside the period when the tuna are travelling through the Bight and resident there in summer.". — Preceding unsigned comment added by AU Yankee (talk • contribs) 11:55, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

March 2015
I'm also a new contributor, and still working out the best & most polite way of improving this article! There is a lengthy report done by SARDI (South Aust. Research and Development Institute) and available on the federal govt. website that states the complete opposite of the GAB being a marine dessert. "Upwelling events during summer and autumn produce cool patches of surface water along the coast of the southern Eyre Peninsula. These patches contain elevated nutrient concentrations and support enhanced levels of primary productivity. High densities of zooplankton to the northwest of the patches indicate that the prevailing southeasterly winds transport the products of this enhanced biological production into the central GAB. These plankton communities support the highest densities of small planktivorous fishes, including sardine and anchovy, in Australian waters. Juvenile southern bluefin tuna (SBT) migrate into the GAB annually to feed on these rich pelagic resources." Also, "The “Interim Marine and Coastal Regionalisation of Australia (IMCRA)” classification suggests that high biodiversity in the GAB may be explained by the presence of temperate species with eastern and western affinities, as well as “tropical stragglers” from northern regions." And, "...the macroalgal assemblage of the GAB is one of the world’s most diverse and includes >1200 species. Over 90% of species in most invertebrate groups are endemic to southern Australia, but the proportion that is confined to the GAB is unknown." Also, "Approximately 370 of the 600 fish species that occur in southern Australia have been recorded in SA. Several species, including the coastal stingaree (Urolophus orarius) and 10 crested threefin (Norfolkia cristata), are restricted to South Australia and occur in the GAB. The patterns of distribution and abundance of fishes in the GAB are poorly understood." And finally, "The GAB provides critical habitat for two species of marine mammals that are recognised internationally as being priorities for conservation. The southern right whale (Eubalaena australis), which is listed as ‘endangered’ under the Commonwealth Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, breeds at the Head of Bight during winter. The Australian sea lion (Neophoca cinerea), which is endemic to Australia and is currently listed as “near threatened”, breeds in small colonies along the cliffs of the GAB."

Can I simply add these sections to the article, referencing the SARDI Report? CLC84 (talk) 04:06, 11 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Hi there CLC84 - Yes, you can add them in, your expertise in the area would be much appreciated. When you do other editors will come and tidy the text up, add links etc..... All the best Hughesdarren (talk) 09:40, 11 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks Hughesdarren - another question though, should I leave the conflicting info that's currently there, or remove it? I don't want to offend anyone! 150.101.19.203 (talk) 00:37, 12 March 2015 (UTC)CLC84 (talk) 01:29, 12 March 2015 (UTC)


 * There's no real contradiction - due to the extremely low terrestrial runoff (and therefore nutrients), conditions are generally oligotrophic, with occasional (seasonal) upwellings bringing relatively elevated levels (compared to the background level) of nutrients to some areas. For example, the GAB literature review you quote states (page 37): A study of the western GAB during summer found that zooplankton biomass was only 2% of that in the Gulf of Carpentaria. Similarly, (on page 36): The waters of the GAB are clear and allow chlorophyllus plants to live at depths of up to 70 m - this clarity is another indicator of oligotrophic conditions, even though this particular document doesn't specifically use the term. High biodiversity doesn't necessarily equate to high biomass. Another example - the southern right whales that come to Head of Bight during the southern hemisphere winter do so to calve and mate, they don't actually feed there - they do that only in Antarctic waters during the summer. I'll restore the deleted paragraph, with some modifications. Cheers, Bahudhara (talk) 06:17, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
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Assessment comment
Substituted at 16:38, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

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Surface area is way off
The article's infobox mentions that the Bight's area is 45,926 km2, but this seems way off.

With a quick measurement in QGIS, I get a value in the order of 260,000 km2 when using the boundaries of the Australian Hydrographic Service (and of the 2002 draft of the International Hydrographic Organization's Limits of Oceans and Seas). For the boundaries defined by the IHO's 1953 version of Limits of Oceans and Seas (which is still in application), the shapefile from this study gives me an area of 1,521,896 km2. Axel41 (talk) 22:05, 21 November 2020 (UTC)