This feeds into a global initiative, the Ocean Decade, which aims to transform our planet's marine landscape for the better by 2030, including eliminating ocean pollution, mapping ecosystems, targeting marine hypoxia (depleted oxygen concentrations), sustainably harvesting food to support society and protecting communities from ocean hazards (such as tsunamis).

Extending up to 200 nautical miles (~370 km) from Australia's entire coastline, the Exclusive Economic Zone encircles the continent, with almost half of it containing protected areas known as Australian Marine Parks. These parks have recently become the focus of enhanced monitoring to identify key pressures facing the organisms inhabiting them, encouraging implementation of new stewardship strategies.

New research published in Frontiers in Marine Science has turned to seabed mapping to generate habitat maps that can be monitored over decades to identify significant changes that may pose hazards to local wildlife.

The AusSeabed program is a national initiative launched in 2018 that compiles bathymetric data (the underwater equivalent of topography, studying the depths of ocean floors) to produce geomorphometric maps that can be used to predict the scale and location of particular biological assemblages, as well as differences in them over time.