Bass Canyon
Submarine canyon
The canyon is located just southeast of Victoria’s coast
Interactive map of Bass Canyon
Location	Bass Strait, Tasman Sea
Age	Late Pliocene
Area
• Total	250,000 hectares (620,000 acres)
Dimensions
• Length	80 kilometres (50 mi)
• Width	10 kilometres (6.2 mi)

Bass Canyon is a submarine canyon located on the edge of the continental shelf off the coast of eastern Victoria, Australia, within Bass Strait, approximately 90 kilometres (56 mi) southeast of Ninety Mile Beach, Lakes Entrance.^[1][2] The canyon descends to depths exceeding 3,000 metres (9,800 ft), making it one of the deepest submarine canyons off the Australian coast, one of the largest in the world, and among the most impressive modern submarine canyon systems.^[3][4] The exact age of the canyon is debatable as the precise timing of its formation remains uncertain.^[5]

Bass Canyon, together with its largest tributary, Everard Canyon, was initially documented in 1968 on the basis of bathymetric soundings collected by the Royal Australian Navy Hydrographic Office. The earliest modern sediment samples from Bass Canyon were documented by Schneider (1985) and Colwell et al. (1987), based on a small set of cores and dredged material.^[4] Although temperatures in the canyon hover just above freezing, it still sustains a remarkable diversity of rarely observed organisms, including deep sea fish.^[1] To the east, the Tasman Basin is revealed within the Bass Canyon and along the continental shelf margin.^[5]