Marine Reserves in Tasmania

Tasmania has the most coastline per unit area of any other Australian state with a whopping 5,400 km of shore. For comparison, Spain, France and Argentina each have just under 5,000km of coastline. Wow! The waters off Tasmania are some of the most diverse marine ecosystems in the world - one area is even known as having the most marine plant diversity in the world. Tasmanian waters are known to have 80-90% endemic species, due to these areas being isolated for so long. The marine environment includes regions of kelp forests, seagrass beds and sponge gardens. These areas create some great diving areas - Tasmania is known to have some of the best diving in temperate waters. This is helped by the extent of marine protected areas in Tasmanian waters:

Tasmania has a large amount of its waters protected as Marine Protected Areas. About 7.9% of the state's coastal waters are protected, although only 4.2% are no-take areas. The Tasmanian Reserve Estate covers 135,100 hectares of of MPAs. This is a pretty impressive amount of it's coast that has been dedicated to protection, however only about 1% of the no-take areas are close to shore. For perspective on a global scale, 2.2% of the global seas are protected, 9.7% of which is in territorial seas (0-12 nautical miles from shore). In the U.S., 3% of American waters are no-take areas. Hopefully, we'll see other countries or states begin to follow Tasmania in protecting more of the ocean. 

-Isabella
http://www.parks.tas.gov.au/index.aspx?base=397