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Voyage Number

IN2026_V03

Voyage Dates

14 May, 2026 to 22 May, 2026

Voyage Location

Hobart to Hobart

Chief Scientist

Dr Elizabeth Shadwick

Institution

IMOS

Voyage summary

Research voyage to the Southern Ocean to maintain long-term deep-water automated moorings for monitoring of ocean and climate.

This voyage will contribute to global data sets and increase understanding of Southern Ocean characteristics, variability and processes. The Southern Ocean Time Series (SOTS) moorings provide year-long observations in a critical part of the Southern Ocean, where ocean interactions are most intense and least studied. This is information vital for informing ocean and climate modelling.

The primary objective is to first deploy a new set of SOTS moorings (SOFS-15 and SAZ-28) and then recover the existing SOTS moorings (SAZ-27).

There are 3 other projects included on this voyage:

  • Chumbucket (Dr Ruth Eriksen, CSIRO): sampling for phytoplankton diversity.
  • Globalising Marine Biodiversity Observations (GLOMBO): autonomous genomic sampling (Sahan Jayasinghe, CSIRO): development of an autonomous environmental DNA (eDNA) sampling system that can be integrated into RV Investigator's underway seawater system.
  • Developing Jonathan: an on-vessel automated seabird detector (Carlie Devine and Rich Little, CSIRO): collection of seabird counts in coastal and open ocean environments using an automated on-vessel seabird detector called ‘Jonathan’.

SOTS is part of the Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS), a global monitoring program to collect long time-series ocean data to better understand ocean and climate change and variability.

The science team will have 8 science participants representing 3 institutions, and the voyage includes 21 ship crew from Cyan.

Voyage outcomes

Voyage outcomes will be provided 3-6 months after the completion of the voyage.

Voyage media