2009/10 Annual Progress Report Integrated Marine Observing System for National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy ‐ Capability 5.12 and Education Investment Fund Super Science Initiative ‐ Marine and Climate IMOS is supported by the Australian Government through the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy and the Super Science Initiative. It is led by the University of Tasmania on behalf of the Australian marine & climate science community. IMOS Annual Progress Report 2009/10 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page 1 Executive summary 3 2 Description of activities: 2.1 Research infrastructure 4 2.2 Access and pricing 5 2.3 Performance indicators 5 2.4 Governance 7 2.5 Risk management strategy 7 2.6 Promotion 8 3 Progress against milestones 9 4 Deviations from the Business Plan 10 5 Financial and human resources 11 6 Audit statement 11 7 Confidential information 11 APPENDICES A NCRIS Facility Reports: A.1 Argo Australia 12 A.2 Enhanced Measurements from Ships of Opportunity (SOOP) 20 A.3 Deep Water Moorings (DWM, was SOTS) 33 A.4 Australian National Facility for Ocean Gliders (ANFOG) 38 A.5 Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Facility (AUV) 43 A.6 Australian National Mooring Network (ANMN) 52 A.7 Australian Coastal Ocean Radar Network (ACORN) 73 A.8 Australian Animal Tagging and Monitoring System (AATAMS) 78 A.9 Facility for Automated Intelligent Monitoring of Marine Systems (FAIMMS) 91 A.10 electronic Marine Information Infrastructure (eMII) 97 A.11 Satellite Remote Sensing (SRS) 101 A.12 Australian Oceans Data Network (AODN) Development Office 117 B EIF Facility Reports: B.1 Argo Australia 118 B.2 Deep Water Moorings (was SOTS) 120 B.3 Australian National Facility for Ocean Gliders (ANFOG) 122 B.4 Australian National Mooring Network (ANMN) 123 B.5 Australian Animal Tagging and Monitoring System (AATAMS) 127 C Node Reports: C.1 Bluewater and Climate Node 133 C.2 Queensland’s Integrated Marine Observing System (Q‐IMOS, was GBROOS) 139 C.3 New South Wales Integrated Marine Observing System (NSW‐IMOS) 142 C.4 Southern Australian Integrated Marine Observing System (SAIMOS) 148 C.5 Western Australian Integrated Marine Observing System (WAIMOS) 152 D Milestone Reports D.1 NCRIS Milestone Report 155 D.2 EIF Milestone Report 165 E Financial Statements E.1 NCRIS financial statement 167 E.2 EIF financial statement 176 F List of Acronyms 179 IMOS Annual Progress Report 2009/10 2 1 Executive summary The year under review was enormously productive for IMOS. Demonstrable progress detailed in this 2009‐10 Annual Progress Report provides clear evidence that the IMOS community now has the capability and capacity to deliver national, collaborative, research infrastructure for the benefit of Australian marine and climate science as a whole. Being the penultimate year of the NCRIS Program, the IMOS 2009‐10 Annual Business Plan laid out an ambitious program to: 1. finalise some particularly complex deployments, 2. make rapid progress on data availability through the Ocean Portal (launched in June 2009), and 3. begin to show measurable uptake and use of the data streams. The very welcome announcement of an additional $52M of EIF funding in the May 2009 Federal Budget, with $8M to 45,000,000 be invested in 2009‐10, ‘upped the 40,000,000 ante’ considerably. The funding profile (see opposite) shows that 2009‐10 was planned to be the peak year under NCRIS, with investment growing by 25% from 2008‐ 09. Adding in the EIF investment has resulted in 62% growth, year‐on‐year. Importantly, 2010‐11 figures illustrate 06‐7 07‐8 08‐9 10‐11 that this level of activity will need to be 09‐10 sustained on an ongoing basis. The financial statements for both the NCRIS and EIF work are provided in Appendix E. Those statements demonstrate strong alignment of the planned budget to actual expenditure. The NCRIS co‐investments received are far in excess of the planned budget – being $1.6M or 173% above budget for cash co‐investment and $6.1M or 210% above budget for in‐kind – this is an exceptional result and which indicates the true collaborative nature of IMOS. Operators also advised significant co‐investments for the EIF work commenced in 2009‐10 totalling $1.6M, but as we did not budget for these, no comparatives can be drawn. There are many deployment and recovery successes detailed in this Report. Completion of the high risk / high return Southern Ocean Time Series deployment is a particular highlight. And the rapid response of our Argo, Deepwater Moorings, Ocean Glider, National Moorings Network and Animal Tagging Facilities to the additional opportunities provided by EIF funding has been truly impressive, providing an indication of the extent to which IMOS has been successful in building national capacity. IMOS Annual Progress Report 2009/10 3 Availability of data has been growing by the day, and with eMII now producing a monthly report that shows status by Facility, from deployment of equipment to production of data products, IMOS is in a good position to measure its data availability performance on a routine basis. Uptake and use of data has strengthened considerably over the last twelve months, and is expected to show ‘step‐change’ improvement year by year, as more and more data becomes available. It was particularly pleasing to see IMOS data streams underpinning a number of Super Science Fellowships awarded to high‐profile scientists at the University of Sydney, University of Tasmania, Australian Institute of Marine Science and Australian Antarctic Division. Deviations from plan are also detailed in this report, and two issues are worth highlighting: • Introduction of ocean radar technology into Australia continues to be more difficult than anticipated. Expectations of this technology remain high, however further work needs to be done to realise this potential across the IMOS community. • The Argo program, which has been the single largest development of the in‐situ global ocean observing system over the last decade, had to halt deployments due to a manufacturing problem with pressure sensors. The international community responded swiftly to correct the problem, and 63% of 2009‐10 IMOS deployments (NCRIS and EIF) were achieved, with planning well‐advanced to catch‐up in 2010‐11. However a problem of this magnitude in one of the more mature elements of the global system shows that constant vigilance will be required over the long term to maintain climate‐quality records for fundamental, environmental variables. 2 Description of activities: 2.1 Research infrastructure IMOS creates and delivers data streams for use in marine and climate science in Australia. Essentially, the research infrastructure we are creating and developing are the long time series gathered from the observing equipment we have deployed in Australia’s oceans. The IMOS Ocean Portal (http://imos.aodn.org.au) allows the marine and climate science community to discover and explore the data streams coming from all of the facilities. The IMOS Ocean Portal has now been operational for 12 months. All IMOS data streams are available, some in near‐real time, some as non‐quality controlled, increasingly as delayed mode quality controlled data. Details of the data streams available are provided in each of the Facility Reports (see Appendices A.1‐A.9 and A.11). Key Deployments of research infrastructure: Southern Ocean Flux Station‐ since its deployment in March 2010, the Southern Ocean Flux Station (SOFS) has been relaying back to shore hourly observations of the wind, temperature, humidity, air pressure, sunlight and rain, giving insight into the current conditions “down south” as well as helping to build a record in this climatically important region of the world ocean. Seals as Oceanographic Samplers – AATAMS successfully deployed nine conductivity, temperature and depth (CTD) tags on Australian sea lions at 5 locations spread across eastern Great Australian Bight, South Australia to collect cross‐shelf transects with high resolution and broad temporal and IMOS Annual Progress Report 2009/10 4 spatial coverage. Profiles collected between November and May coincident with seasonal upwelling events, along Australia’s southern shelves, principally Flinders Current upwelling. AATAMS also deployed 15 CTD tags on southern elephant seals at Macquarie Island. This data enables both biologists and oceanographers to learn from the seals to gain a much better understanding of how the environment influences the seals foraging behaviour and success, directly in relation to differences in the ocean around them. With this new method of collecting integrated data IMOS will enable researchers to determine the big changes in the Southern Ocean and the influences they may have on the fragile ecosystem. National Mooring Network ‐ the Indonesian Throughflow Shelf Transect Moorings (the array is comprised of four moorings extending from the Timor Trough to Joseph Bonaparte Gulf) were deployed in June. This is an important first step in the enhanced monitoring of northern Australian waters with the additional funds IMOS received from the Education Investment Fund (EIF). Ocean Gliders ‐ the EIF funded Southern Ocean Time Series Seaglider was successfully launched in March and was retrieved off the continental shelf of Tasmania after 76 days at sea. The datastreams from the Seaglider will allow researchers to better understand the currents in the Southern Ocean that influence the Australian climate and marine ecosystems. Another Seaglider will traverse a new route in the Coral Sea and the first glider was deployed on the 1st of June. 2.2 Access and pricing All of the data collected by IMOS is openly and freely available in a timely manner to all users through the IMOS Ocean Portal (http://imos.aodn.org.au/webportal/). This includes users for research, as well as operational activities such as BLUElink and seasonal climate forecasting and industrial applications. 2.3 Performance indicators Details on the performance indicators are given in the reports from each of the facilities in Appendices A and B.