Gulf of Papua
Located off New Guinea's south coast, the Gulf of Papua is an inlet of the Coral Sea, around 360 kilometres wide, extending from the Fly River Delta's southwestern corner to Cape Suckling, seventy kilometres northwest of Port Moresby, enclosing a sea area of approximately 35,000 square kilometres. The gulf forms a broad shelf with a maximum width of about 150 kilometres between the shelf break and the Fly River's mouth, narrowing to less than twenty kilometres east of the Purari River delta. In the southwest, the Gulf adjoins the Torres Strait shelf at Australia's northeastern tip.
Water depths vary as large rivers, including the Fly, deposit sediments into the Coral Sea, which are reworked by prevailing tides and seasonal currents to form a world of swampy tidal waterways along its western edge that is, effectively, a large, shallow delta.
