AUV Sirius (IMOS Platform code: SIRIUS) spent two weeks in Tasmania in October 2008 surveying sites as part of the Commonwealth Environmental Research Facility (CERF) Marine Biodiversity Research Hub.
The AUV deployments focused on sites along the Tasman Peninsula in South East Tasmania and in the Huon Marine Protected Area (MPA). The objective of the cruise was to describe biological assemblages associated with rocky reef systems in deep shelf waters beyond normal diving depths. Detailed multibeam mapping of the survey areas had been undertaken prior to the AUV deployment to determine suitable survey locations and to identify any hazards to operation.
At each location, multiple reefs were selected for detailed survey work at a range of depths from approximately 50 m to 150 m. Dive profiles were designed to include sufficient replication to quantitatively determine abundances of key species/features within depth strata, within reefs, between reefs (km to 100 km scale), and between differing levels of reef complexity.
Over the course of the 10 days of operation, the vehicle undertook 19 dives and visited all the sites of interest identified prior to the voyage. At the conclusion of the trip the dataset included over 1TB of geotiff imagery, multibeam, AUV tracks, 3D textured meshes and hydrographical data.
The sites visited in October 2008 were:
- Waterfall Bay
- O'Hara Reef
- Patch-Reef-North
- Hippo North
- Chevron Rock
- Little Hippo North
- Little Hippo South East
- Hippo South
- Chevron Rock South
- Blowhole
- Sisters
- Port Arthur Channel
- Port Arthur Patch-Reef
- High Yellow
- Butt's Reef
- Zuid Pool
- Butt's Pockmarks
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