Ninety Mile Beach Marine National Park

Victoria's Ninety Mile Beach lies on the edge of a long slender sand dune, thrown up from the sea by the easterly waves and protecting the Gippsland Lakes. Offshore, beneath the water, vast plains of sand stretch in every direction. There are no rocky headlands or platforms along this coast. Offshore, the sandy plains are only occasionally broken by low ribbons of reef which formed as shorelines or sand dunes during ice-ages when the sea-level was lower than today.

The area has been found to have the highest species diversity anywhere on the planet. In ten square metres 860 species were discovered living in the sand and in one square metre a staggering 187 species.