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Bathymetric data of Long and Tryne Fjords at Vestfold Hills, Antarctica, collected in December 1999

Created 23/06/2025

Updated 23/06/2025

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This dataset contains 102 depth measurements of the water column in Long and Tryne fjords, which are in the northern Vestfold Hills, Prydz Bay, Antarctica. Sea ice thickness and snow thickness were recorded simultaneously. The motivation for this project has been to yield a description of the pupping and moulting habitat of Weddell seals. This information will assist the interpretation of 25+ years of data on seal distribution within that area. Our data were collected between 7th and 13th December 1999. The measurement sites were chosen according to geographical features; their exact location was determined by GPS with an accuracy of about 25m. At each site a 5cm diameter hole was drilled through the sea ice and a weighted measurement tape was lowered through the ice-hole to the bottom. Water depths were measured to the nearest centimetre; ice and snow thicknesses were measured to the nearest millimetre. A minimum depth of less than 3m was found in a narrow channel between small islands immediately west of Shirokaya Bay. The maximum depth of the water column was 222m in the middle basin of Long Fjord. The tidal range for the measured days was less than 0.5m, with tidal corrections applied to the raw data. Water samples were taken in Breid Basin and the middle basin of Long Fjord. These and water samples taken in Snezhnyy Bay [pers. comm. J. Laybourn-Parry, 1999] show aerobic and relatively fresh water for all upper basins. This indicates that even the far basins of both fjords are well mixed despite the drainage of large volumes meltwater from the Antarctic plateau into the fjords. See related URL for data and a spatial summary of the data. See Entry: long_tryne_bathy for an interpolation of bathymetry made using the Topogrid command within the ArcInfo GIS software, version 8.0.2. Coastline and spot height (heights above sea level) data, extracted from the Australian Antarctic Data Centre's Vestfold Hills topographic GIS dataset (see Entry: vest_hills_gis), was also used as input data to optimise the interpolation close to the coastline. The fields in this dataset are: day weighpoint lat(dd) long(dd) ice (cm) freeboard(cm) snow(cm) depth(m)

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Additional Info

Field Value
Title Bathymetric data of Long and Tryne Fjords at Vestfold Hills, Antarctica, collected in December 1999
Language eng
Licence Not Specified
Landing Page https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/c2e88401-4f11-4a20-8233-20cfafbb90cf
Contact Point
Australian Ocean Data Network
metadata@aad.gov.au
Reference Period 07/12/1999 - 13/12/1999
Geospatial Coverage
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors
{
  "coordinates": [
    78.0,
    -69.0
  ],
  "type": "Point"
}
Data Portal Australian Oceans Data Network

Data Source

This dataset was originally found on Australian Oceans Data Network "Bathymetric data of Long and Tryne Fjords at Vestfold Hills, Antarctica, collected in December 1999". Please visit the source to access the original metadata of the dataset:
https://catalogue.aodn.org.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/csw/dataset/bathymetric-data-of-long-and-tryne-fjords-at-vestfold-hills-antarctica-collected-in-decemb-1999