IMOS has enhanced an existing mooring in the Bonney Coast region to become part of our National Reference Station network.
IMOS has established a network of National Reference Station (NRS) moorings to provide baseline information that is required to understand how large-scale, long-term change and variability in the global oceans are affecting the ecosystems of Australia’s coastal seas. The sites include both continuous moored-sensor sampling, and quarterly vessel-based sampling, measuring a wide range of physical, biogeochemical and biological variables.
The National Reference Station Network has consisted of seven sites around the coast of Australia. Three established, long-term sites that existed prior to IMOS (Maria Island, Tasmania, Port Hacking, NSW, Rottnest Island, WA), and four additional sites to cover the distinct regions of Australia’s coastal oceans (Darwin, NT, Yongala, QLD, North Stradbroke Island, QLD, Kangaroo Island, SA).
IMOS, with our partners Deakin University and SARDI, have established and maintained a mooring since 2019 in the Bonney Coast region to fill a significant gap in the IMOS observations. Encompassing the shelf waters between Cape Jaffa in South Australia and Cape Otway in Victoria, the Bonney Coast hosts a strong seasonal wind-driven coastal upwelling system that supports one of the most productive marine regions in Australian coastal waters of high ecological and economic importance to South Australia and Victoria.
IMOS has recently upgraded this Victorian mooring to convert it into a National Reference Station site – bringing the network up to a total of eight sites. In early April staff from Deakin University and SARDI serviced the existing Bonney mooring. Whilst at the site, the first quarterly/seasonal NRS water samples were collected to measure a range of biogeochemical and biological variables.
“The upgrade of the Bonney mooring to a National Reference Station broadens the spatial monitoring of our globally unique Great Southern Australian upwelling system beyond the long time series of observations collected by IMOS at the Kangaroo Island National Reference Station since 2008. The collected observations will deepen our knowledge of the response and differences between the major upwelling hotspots located along our southern shelf seas that span across our State borders”, says Dr Mark Doubell, SARDI Oceanographer.
By adding this mooring in Victoria IMOS will build on the multi-decadal time series of the physical and biogeochemical properties of Australia’s coastal seas we already have collected, with the data able to inform research into ocean change, climate variability, ocean circulation and ecosystem responses.
“In addition, we have never seen Bass Strait busier with extensive decommissioning in the oil and gas sector and an emerging offshore wind industry with close to half of the proposed precincts situated in Bass Strait,” says Associate Professor Daniel Ierodiaconou, Marine Scientist from Deakin University.
“From selecting optimal locations for wind farms to planning construction and operations, to decommissioning infrastructure, these decision-making processes rely entirely on ocean observations.”
“The Victorian National Reference Station also anchors other sustained observing IMOS does in the region. This includes the following collocated infrastructure: a cross shelf acoustic curtain, coastal wave buoys, ocean acidification monitoring, microplastic sampling and seasonal glider missions,” said Associate Professor Ierodiaconou.
