Region: Southern Ocean
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Australian Plankton Survey
The Australian Plankton Survey measures plankton communities around Australia using Continuous Plankton Recorders (CPRs). Being small and free-floating, plankton are useful indicators of ecosystem health and changes. The long-term datasets of Australian plankton sampled and processed by the Australian Plankton Survey provide researches and policymakers with environmental and climatic indicators, harmful algal bloom detection, eutrophication…
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Biogeochemical Sensors
Biogeochemical Sensors collect high-quality underway CO2 observations from ships specially fitted with CO2 underway systems. Biogeochemical Sensors increase the spatial coverage of CO2 observations in both Australian waters and the Southern Ocean, complementing data collected by moorings (Acidification Moorings and Southern Ocean Time Series Observatory). How it works IMOS uses ships that routinely undertake the same voyage tracks,…
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Expendable Bathythermographs
Expendable Bathythermographs (XBTs) are single-use instruments that are used to measure temperature profiles of the ocean. XBTs are launched from hand-held units, connected to the XBT itself by a thin copper wire that allows temperature data to be directly transmitted as the XBT sinks (up to 800 m). After the length of the copper wire…
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Ships of Opportunity
The IMOS Ships of Opportunity (SOOP) Facility uses a combination of volunteer commercial and research vessels to collect data relating to physical, chemical and biological oceanography and ecology. As chartered vessels for equipment deployment are expensive and time consuming, the use of volunteer vessels, in addition to equipment especially designed to be deployed efficiently and…
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Animal Tagging
Animal Tagging deploys miniaturised sensors on marine animals to collect oceanographic data from remote and hard-to-access environments. In the Southern Ocean, Weddell and southern elephant seals are equipped with CTD satellite relay data loggers (often including fluorometers which measure ocean productivity), to collect high resolution ocean observations derived from temperature, salinity and depth profiles in…
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Animal Tracking
Animal Tracking supports the collection of a wide range of data using tagged animals including fish, sharks and marine mammals. Data collection Animal Tracking consists of two sub-Facilities: Acoustic Telemetry, which uses a continental-scale array of strategically placed underwater acoustic receivers and a central data repository to monitor and track broad-scale movements of tagged animals,…