A scientist from UNSW Sydney is spearheading a program to crowdsource ocean data from understudied areas.
A group of scientists, including a team at UNSW, are working with Australia's commercial fishing industry to gather invaluable ocean observations. Since its inception, the FishSOOP project (Fisheries Ships of Opportunity) has collected more than 2.8 million data points below the ocean's surface.
"While the ocean environment that Australia is responsible for is one of the largest in the world, the ocean temperature data that we have is mostly concentrated in surface waters or the very narrow edges around the country, adjacent to our bigger cities, with only sparse deep measurements." says Prof. Moninya Roughan, an oceanographer from UNSW.
This has left us with huge gaps in our ability to understand ocean dynamics and warming where it matters most.
To address this ongoing issue, Prof. Roughan, from the School of Biological, Earth & Environmental Science, has co-designed a built-for-purpose ocean sensor that can be attached to fishing gear on commercial vessels to collect ocean temperatures.
After establishing a hugely successful program in Aotearoa New Zealand, Prof. Roughan teamed up with Dr Ian Knuckey from Fishwell Consulting to launch a similar program in Australia - funded by the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation, and Australia's Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS) - working alongside a vast network of fishing industry collaborators.
"We're essentially turning fishing boats into oceanographic research vessels," she says. "We have co-designed a fully automatic system that measures, processes, and delivers temperature observations in near real-time with the goal of providing broad-scale coverage of Australia and New Zealand's coastal waters.
"The impact of this newly gathered data is huge, from improving fishing capabilities, to better understanding the impact of marine heatwaves and improvements to ocean models."
This project also aims to support fisheries and drive a sustainable seafood sector by assisting informed decision-making, reducing the cost of operations and increasing resilience. "Fishing smarter, not harder," says Prof. Roughan.
