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Activities from NSW-IMOS

Activities_from_NSW_IMOS.pdf

Activities from NSW-IMOS

Associate Professor Iain Suthers, University of New South Wales

February 2008

The Sydney Institute of Marine Science (SIMS) is the NSW node leader for IMOS. SIMS is an equal partnership of the University of NSW, University of Technology, Macquarie University and University of Sydney; with associate partners the University of Wollongong, University of Newcastle, Australian Museum, Defence Science and Technology, and others.

Beside the partner universities, NSW-IMOS includes the NSW Department of Primary Industries (DPI), the NSW Department of Environment & Climate Change, the Manly Hydraulics Laboratory (NSW Department of Commerce), and the Sydney Water Corporation.

NSW-IMOS is responsible for:

• Australian Acoustic Telemetry and Monitoring System (AATAMS) – which has also attracted $1.25M from the Ocean Tracking Network. AATAMS will deploy ‘listening curtains’ across the NSW shelf from the beach to 100–200m deep, which records when an acoustically tagged shark swims by. The NSW DPI already has ~70 listening posts for tagged grey nurse sharks between Byron Bay and Eden.

• Autonomous Underwater Vehicle – for surveying deep water habitats (to 700m) and high resolution water quality.

• NSW component of Ocean Mooring network – including passive acoustics (whale song, ice-cracking, mulloway spawning).

Another $5M will support the National Research Vessel, Southern Surveyor. She is nearly 40 years old and has achieved outstanding work, but Canberra must now consider her replacement.

Other NSW-IMOS activities:

• High Frequency Coastal Ocean Radar (HFCOR) provides surface current and wave information from over 300km along shore, and 100km out from land. The antennae broadcast radio waves, and the reflected sound is Doppler shifted by ocean currents or waves. HFCOR can be used for waves, beach erosion, yachting, tsunami watch, search and rescue (Heron, pers. comm.).

• The Slocum Ocean Glider is a 50kg package that can navigate by dead-reckoning and some GPS tweaking. It moves forwards (and vertically) by altering its density, just like the famous Argo floats. Over 22 days off Perth, it traveled nearly 500km and did 110 vertical profiles of temperature, salinity, per day. It records position and water colour for three weeks before retrieval (Pattiaratchi, pers. comm.).

Further information: Iain Suthers, (02) 9385 2065 or I.Suthers@unsw.edu.au

 

Article in WAVES 13(3) 2007