IMOS - ANMN South Australia Mooring Sub-Facility

The Southern Australia Moorings Sub-Facility is part of the Australian National Mooring Network.

This sub-facility is establishing a national reference transect of moorings and measurements off South Australia, which includes all parameters measured by the IMOS National Reference Stations (NRS).

The South Australia moorings sub-facility is based at the South Australian Research and Development Institute in Adelaide and is responsible for a total of five moorings. These moorings are deployed to continuously monitor the large seasonal coastal upwelling of water that occurs along the region's continental shelf during summer. This upwelling brings cold, nutrient rich waters onto the shelf which boosts primary productivity, creating one of the most productive coastal marine ecosystems in Australian waters. The five moorings measure an array of physical and biological properties and are a combination of four regional moorings and a National Reference Station (biological sampling at SAM5CB, SAM8SG and NRS).

The regional moorings consist of one shelf mooring located on the same isobath as the NRS and in the path of the upwelled/downwelled exchange, a mooring located near the mouth of Spencer Gulf to measure possible winter outflow of saline rich water, and two slope moorings at a depths of 175m and 600m positioned across the shelf gradient in line with the NRS to measure the Flinder's Current and possible eddy velocities. The NRS is located at a convergence point of isobaths and monitors upwelling and outflow events as well as long-term variations in the strength of the coastal current.

There are four discontinued moorings that were once part of this sub-facility, for which data is still available: M1 Deep Slope Mooring (SAM1DS) and M6 Investigator Strait Mooring (SAM6IS) were both discontinued in 2009, and M4 Canyon Mooring (SAM4CY) and M2 Cabbage Patch Mooring (SAM2CP) were both discontinued in 2010.