GAB Research Program: Project 5.1 – Geochemical Data

This record describes the geological sample collection and derived analysis data from two Marine National Facility charter voyages conducted under Project (5.1) of the Great Australian Bight Research Program (GABRP): SS2013_C02 and FUGRO charter of the same year. 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. Waters were collected primarily with the CTD rosette of Niskin Bottles. 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 sample collection using the CTD, grab and ICP taken on 5 transects in the central and eastern GAB at 6 depth strata (200m, 400m, 1000m, 1500m, 2000m and 3000m).