Rob’s Blog
Recent ocean mapping events within Australia’s marine region.
Secrets of the Great Barrier Reef submarine canyons
Vast undersea canyons are giving scientists insight into the ancient history of the Great Barrier Reef, and how it has responded to past climate change. “Beyond the familiar coral reefs of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park are deep basins and troughs, as deep as...
‘Unmappable’ Great Barrier Reef mapped
Aquatic remote sensing company EOMAP, together with researchers from James Cook University, the University of Queensland and the Cooperative Research Centre for Spatial Information, have processed historical satellite data to derive a set of groundbreaking, high...
Hydrography as a career for the modern explorer
Hydrography is the branch of applied sciences which measures and describes the physical features of the oceans and adjacent coastal areas, particularly for the purpose of navigation. Hydrographic surveyors measure the depth and configuration of water bodies, and the...
Search for drowned reefs on the Great Barrier Reef
We have just completed a two week voyage around the top of Australia and along the Great Barrier Reef shelf edge on the RV Southern Surveyor, Australia’s largest research vessel. The voyage from Broome to Brisbane was to explore and study the geographic limits of the...
German-Australian collaboration maps the Coral Sea
An underwater cliff recently discovered in the Coral Sea will help shed light on the ancient past, and could also prove to be a hotspot of marine life diversity. The steep, 800-metre cliff is on the western edge of the Queensland Plateau, to the northeast of Cooktown....
Coral Sea Commonwealth Marine Reserve Management Plan
In the Parliament of Australia House of Representatives, a Private Member's Business motion was presented that the Coral Sea Commonwealth Marine Reserves Network Management Plan 2014-2024, made under section 370 of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity...
Workshop on Coral Sea Transboundary Collaboration
Australia and New Caledonia share a maritime boundary in the Coral Sea where their Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) meet. A Declaration of Intentions between France-New Caledonia and Australia on the Sustainable Management of the Coral Sea aims to improve scientific...
Kongsberg multibeam workshop in Deakin University
Deakin University in Warnambool, Victoria, has a 10 metre research vessel, MV Yolla, which also has a Kongsberg EM3002 multibeam swath system used for seabed mapping surveys in shallow coastal waters. It will soon have as a replacement the Kongsberg EM2040C...
Underwater landslides discovered off the Great Barrier Reef
An extensive undersea mapping program of the Australian coast has revealed some surprises about the deep Great Barrier Reef, including a dense network of submarine canyons, the remains of numerous undersea landslide scarps where large parts of the continental slope...