Australia_CSIRO_IN2024_V02_SOTS

Exact points here: https://www.marine.csiro.au/data/underway/?survey=IN2024_V02

Voyage summary

Research voyage to the Southern Ocean to maintain long-term deep-water automated moorings for monitoring of ocean and climate.

This voyage will contribute to global data sets and increase understanding of Southern Ocean characteristics, variability and processes. The Southern Ocean Time Series (SOTS) moorings provide year-long observations in a critical part of the Southern Ocean, where ocean interactions are most intense and least studied. This is information vital for informing ocean and climate modelling.

The primary voyage objective is to recover the existing SOTS moorings (SOFS-12, SOFS-11-SWAP and SAZ-25) and deploy two new SOTS moorings (SOFS-13 and SAZ-26).

There are 4 other projects included on this voyage:

• Microplastics in the food chain: impact on the microbial and planktonic organisms (Elise Tuuri, Flinders University): Collection of water samples and net trawls for microplastics sampling.
• Acoustic survey of basketwork eels on Patience seamount  (Dr Ben Scoulding, CSIRO): Camera and acoustic survey of basketwork eel population on Patience Seamount within the Huon Marine Park.
• Oceanic latitudinal study of diatom silica production rates (A/Prof Katherina Petrou, UTS): Obtain species-specific estimates of silica production within mixed natural phytoplankton communities.
• Evolution of the Seafloor of the Australian-Antarctic Southern Ocean (Phil Vandenbossche, UTAS): Acquisition of targeted seafloor bathymetry and towed magnetometer data. 

The voyage will seek to deploy two Argo floats and may seek to recover a CSIRO ocean glider (if time allows).

SOTS is part of the Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS), a global monitoring program to collect long time-series ocean data to better understand ocean and climate change and variability.

The science team will have 26 science participants representing 6 institutions, and the voyage includes 20 ship crew from MMA Offshore Ltd.