April inspection
Posted: April 30, 2012 Filed under: Home Leave a commentIn April the Executive Director of the Future Research Vessel Project, Toni Moate visited the Sembawang Shipyard in Singapore, to inspect the construction work.
All of these photos were taken by Ben Rae the Project Support Officer for the Future Research Vessel Project.
The keel laying ceremony is only weeks away, so we’ll have more great photos for you then!
Fast Fact!
Posted: April 25, 2012 Filed under: Home Leave a commentStudents and scientists: In the past six years alone, 757 scientists and 123 students have used the Marine National Facility.
East Australian Current on science watch
Posted: April 23, 2012 Filed under: Home 1 CommentCSIRO oceanographers left Brisbane on Friday for a 10-day, $2 million research voyage they believe will generate the most complete profile yet of one of Australia’s most influential environmental features, the East Australian Current.
Working from the CSIRO Marine National Facility research vessel, Southern Surveyor, the scientists will deploy five deep water moorings across the current, extending 240 kilometres east of Brisbane to gain specific insights into the characteristics of the largest ocean current in the Australian region.
Principal investigators for the voyage are Hobart-based scientists, Ken Ridgway and Dr Bernadette Sloyan, specialists in currents in the Australian region with CSIRO’s Wealth from Oceans Flagship.
Dr Sloyan said the East Australian Current impacts our climate and east coast ocean conditions, and so understanding its physical and chemical characteristics as recorded through the mooring network will be important for future natural resource management.
Principal investigators and CSIRO oceanographers Ken Ridgway and Dr Bernadette Sloyan.
The mooring network is the latest addition to the Australian Government funded Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS), which has a strong focus on how offshore conditions influence our coasts via the major boundary currents like the East Australian Current.
Dr Sloyan said IMOS has provided $2m in funding to support this mooring network, which will complement existing IMOS observations being taken off the Great Barrier Reef, the New South Wales coast, and the east coast of Tasmania.
“With this final piece of the jigsaw in place we now have the ability to accurately measure transfer of water, heat and salt from the tropics to the Tasman Sea, to see how it is changing over time, and to understand what these changes might mean for marine ecosystems and coastal populations along the eastern seaboard,” she said.
The moorings consist of sensors recording temperature, salinity, and velocity of the current, spanning the region from the continental margin to off-shore in water depths of nearly five kilometres.
Mr Ridgway said scientists have been studying the East Australian Current for perhaps 100 years, although for the first 60-70 years the focus was on the biology and how it may be influenced by the current.
“In the last 25 years real advances have been made in understanding the East Australian Current, its physical structure and seasonal changes, and more recently its influence on the biodiversity of the east coast.
“What we have also seen in that time is a strengthening of the winds in the Pacific that have intensified ocean circulation and are pushing the current around 350 kilometres further south in the Tasman Sea.
“This research voyage is a terrific opportunity to study the current, and to understand its wider influences on our natural marine resources and for many Australians living on the eastern seaboard its influence in their lifestyle,” Mr Ridgway said.
Southern Surveyor will return to Brisbane on April 29.
Background
The EAC is the largest ocean current close to the coast of Australia. What scientists already know is that the East Australian Current:
- transports up to 30 million cubic metres per second, with a strong influence to 1,000 metres depth and 100 kilometres width.
- is strongest in summer, peaking in February, and weakest (by as much as half the flow) in winter, when its energy dissipates east of Tasmania.
- generates ocean eddies as broad as 200 kilometres across, rotating mainly anti-clockwise at up to four knots at the edge; these can be more than one kilometre deep and have a life of up to a year.
- frequently crosses onto the continental shelf and moves close inshore
- causes upwelling where it moves away from the coast at places like Cape Byron, Smoky Cape and Sugarloaf Point, drawing nutrient-rich water from a depth of 200 metres or more.
By comparison, the Leeuwin Current, originating off the north-west coast of Western Australia carries a fifth as much water, peaking in May-June.
More information: Craig Macaulay
Principal investigators for the East Australian Current study, Bernadette Sloyan and Ken Ridgway, with ocean engineers Danny McLaughlin and Jamie Derrick, who will deploy the deep ocean moorings in depths of up to 5 kms.
The latest graphics for RV Investigator
Posted: April 16, 2012 Filed under: Investigator, Marine National Facility, RV Southern Surveyor, The Future Research Vessel Project Leave a commentAs the new Marine National Facility vessel starts to take shape this year, we’ll be bringing you more and more images of the steel works and assembly.
Here are the latest graphics from the ship building team.
The coloured boxes on the bow and back deck of Investigator are science container laboratories. They’re kind of like the world’s biggest travel suitcases for scientists. The laboratories are built in shipping containers, so researchers can take all of their equipment and tools with them wherever they go. There’s room for 10 of these kinds of labs on board the new ship.
RV Investigator is a very clever ship!
Southern Surveyor can accommodate two container laboratories, and to give you an idea of what they look like, here’s the BGC Clean Laboratory container on the back deck of Southern Surveyor as well as inside the container.
Fast Fact!
Posted: April 16, 2012 Filed under: Fast Fact!, Investigator, Marine National Facility, RV Southern Surveyor, The Future Research Vessel Project Leave a commentMeteorology: Southern Surveyor measures solar and terrestrial radiation to determine ocean heating. Investigator will be able to collect this data nearly year round and in a wider scope of locations.
How long is RV Investigator? What kind of bow thruster will she have? How many engines will there be – one, four, ten?
Posted: April 16, 2012 Filed under: Home, Investigator, The Future Research Vessel Project 2 CommentsI was wondering too!
These and many other details about Australia’s newest marine and atmospheric research vessel, can now be at your finger tips. We’ve created this brochure to give you an idea of where RV Investigator and the FRV Project are up to.
The brochure will be updated during the life of the project.
Southern Surveyor heads off for her first research voyage this year
Posted: April 13, 2012 Filed under: Marine National Facility, RV Southern Surveyor Leave a comment
After successful sea trials, the Marine National Facility vessel Southern Surveyor will head off for her first research voyage for 2012, and she won’t be back in Hobart until early July.
Over the next week she’ll transit up the east coast and spend a day in port in Brisbane, before heading out with CSIRO’s Ken Ridgway and his team, to deploy floats and buoys along the East Australian Current. The voyage will leave Brisbane on 20 April and return to Brisbane on 30 April.
Then it’s over to Professor Richard Arculus from the Australian National University, who will be conducting magmatism, tectonics and hydrothermal activity research on the Marine National Facility vessel, near Fiji in early May.
If you want to keep track of Southern Surveyor this year, then check out the schedule for 2012/13 at: http://www.marine.csiro.au/nationalfacility/schedules/index.htm
