Marine Faunal Surveys of Ashmore Reef and Cartier island: North Western Australia

Ashmore reef and nearby Cartier Island are located on the north-western extremity of the Sahul shelf. They are approximately 350 km off the Kimberley coast of Australia and 145km from Roti, Indonesia.
The morphology and physical environments of the two reefs systems are briefly described as a background to faunal inventories presented in parts 2-7 of this publication.

Ashmore Reef is similar in general shape and morphology to other shelf-edge atolls off the north western coast of Australia, but because of the larger breaks in the reef there is no impounding of water in the lagoon on outgoing tides as at the Rowley shoals and to lesser extent, Scott Reef. There are three vegetated islets on Ashmore Reef. Cartier Island , an unvegetated sand cay, is surrounded by an oval-shaped reef platform approximately 4.5km long by 2.3km wide.