GAB Research Program: Project 3.1 – Benthic Biodiversity Characterisation: Sediment data

This record describes the sediment collection and derived grainsize and composition data from two Marine National Facility charter voyages conducted under the Benthic Characterisation Project (3.1) of the Great Australian Bight Research Program (GABRP): SS2013_C02 and IN2016__C02. The GABRP aims to describe the key elements of the GAB marine ecosystem. This understanding of the structure and function of the ecosystem will be used to inform future integrated and sustainable ocean management and assessment/mitigation of potential future impacts. An overarching objective of the voyages was to contribute to developing models of ecosystem-level structure and function for the GAB. Sediments were collected primarily using the Integrated Coring Platform (ICP) and supplemented with the Smith-MacIntyre grab. The Integrated Coring Platform ( ICP) combines a number of technologies to maximise sampling in a single deployment. The ICP is built around a 6 barrel corer (KC, Denmark) and together with its central electronics module integrates cameras (cable, seafloor and corer views), CTD (SBE37IDO), altimeter, 120KHz scientific echo-sounders, Niskin bottles and hydrocarbon sensor suite. Sensor data is delivered in real time to the surface via fibre optic deployment cable. The Smith-MacIntyre grab is a comparatively simple tool collecting sediments. This metadata record describes the sediment collection using the grab and ICP taken on 5 transects in the central and eastern GAB at 6 depth strata (200m, 400m, 1000m, 1500m, 2000m and 3000m).