
The
Lombok Strait Indonesian:
Selat Lombok is a
strait connecting the
Java Sea to the
Indian Ocean, located between the
islands of
Bali and
Lombok in
Indonesia. The
Gili Islands are on the Lombok side.
Its narrowest point is at its southern opening, with a width of only 18 km, but at the northern opening it is 40 km across. Total length is about 60 km. Because it is 250 m deep — much deeper than the
Strait of Malacca — ships that draw too much water to pass through Malacca (so-called "post
Malaccamax" vessels) often use the Lombok Strait, instead.
The Lombok Strait is notable as one of the main passages for the
Indonesian throughflow that exchanges water between the Indian Ocean and the
Pacific Ocean.
It is also part of the
biogeographical boundary between the fauna of
Indo-Malaysia and the distinctly different fauna of
Australasia. The boundary is known as the
Wallace Line, for
Alfred Russel Wallace, who first remarked upon the striking difference between animals of Indo-Malaysia from those of Australasia and how abrupt the boundary was between the two
biomes.
Biologists believe it was the depth of the Lombok Strait itself that kept the animals on either side isolated from one another. When sea levels dropped during the
Pleistocene ice age, the islands of Bali,
Java and
Sumatra were all connected to one another and to the mainland of Asia. They shared the Asian fauna. The Lombok Strait's deep water kept Lombok and the
Lesser Sunda archipelago isolated from the Asian mainland. These islands were, instead, colonized by Australasian fauna.