Location Technology Within a Marine Research Context

Location technology within a marine research context:

case studies and opportunities

Luke Edwards (Presenter)

Pawsey Supercomputing Centre / Western Australian Marine Science Institution (WAMSI)

Executive Summary

Australia’s total area of marine responsibility covers 14 per cent of the world’s oceans, more than double the size of its land mass1. Marine researchers play an important role in understanding, monitoring and solving challenges facing Australia in managing this marine environment.

As the marine estate is so large and the number of marine researchers limited; researchers need to make use of innovative technology, including the use of spatial technology / information, to undertake effective science. This presentation will provide case-studies based on my experience working in State Government and Research sectors and show how the use of location technology can present opportunities to advance marine science.

For example, each year Australian marine scientists collect many thousands of images of marine habitats for environmental monitoring of aquatic flora and fauna. Scientists manually sort through these images to measure and identify these flora and fauna. This data can then be analyzed to build habitat maps and other marine spatial products. This process is often labour intensive and with the volume of imagery increasing every year with better technology this manual scoring is becoming unsustainable. In addition, there was no standardised approach to the classification of this imagery making comparison and aggregation of different datasets very difficult.To assist marine ecologists in making this process more efficient the CATAMI project was created which developed both software and a standard classification scheme (

The proliferation of cheaper GPS-enabled technology that collect imagery will see marine habitat mapping change in the future with opportunities for citizen scientists to assist researchers in monitoring the marine environment.

Some other examples of location technology used in marine research include:

-animal telemetry (e.g OzTrack - and Australian Animal Tagging and Monitoring System (AATAMS) -

-satellite remote sensing (GA, IMOS, TERN)

-bathymetry mapping (various organisations)

Reference List:

1. Oceans Policy Science Advisory Group, author. & Australian Institute of Marine Science, issuing body. (2013). Marine nation 2025 : Marine science to support Australia's blue economy. Townsville, Qld : Australian Institute of Marine Science (