CANYONS Voyage Blog

Plan A to Z By Dr Alix Post The team on board CSIRO’s RV Investigator. Photo credit: Aero Leplastrier. Just over a month ago, our team set out on CSIRO’s research vessel (RV) Investigator with great anticipation of the planned science and the discoveries that we might make, after months (and years) of detailed planning. However, as […]

Team onboard RV Investigator sampling a kasten core (Image: Helen Bostock) By Tom Williams (UTAS) and Helen Bostock (UQ) To understand our changing climate today and improve predictions about future climate we need to have long climate records to compare to. But instrumental data only reach back a century, and we don’t have much data

Examples of microfossils that we use to study how the marine environment has changed over time. On board the research vessel (RV) Investigator there are several researchers on the expedition who are taking water and sediment samples to study ‘plankton’. Plankton means that they can’t swim against a current, most plankton are tiny, but some are large

Geomorphology beneath the deep blue sea By Rachel Nanson and Michal Wenderlich, Geoscience Australia Fig 1. One of RV Investigator’s geophysicists, Francisco Navidad, continually monitors and records incoming data. On the 7000 km transit south to Antarctica and then in the study area of Cape Darnley, the CSIRO research vessel (RV) Investigator’s technical staff and science team have

Antarctica and the Southern Ocean have historically been the domain of male explorers and scientists. For many years women were not allowed to sail on ships as it was considered bad luck (despite the fact that ships are often referred to as females!). Over the last few decades that has been changing with increasing numbers

Ocean currents Image: Kathy Gunn checking the Argo signal before deployment. Photo: A. Post Dr Kathy Gunn (Physical Oceanographer, CSIRO) As early as the 1960s, over 165,000 marked bottles were strategically released to measure the speed and direction of ocean currents. Less strategically, a cargo ship accidentally spilled almost 30,000 bath toys (mostly rubber ducks)

Sea2SchoolAu – virtual ship tours! Have you or your kids ever wondered what scientists do on a research ship? Why is it important to study the oceans around Antarctica? Unfortunately we can’t take you on the voyage or even a tour of the ship in person, but modern satellite and internet technology does allow us

Cape Darnley – What’s in a name? Have you ever been curious about the names of places around the coast of Antarctica? Many of these places were named by early explorers in the early 20th Century to honour important people who had funded or supported these voyages of discovery. Cape Darnley, for instance, was named

What you need to know about Antarctic Bottom Water The science team onboard the RV Investigator in Fremantle. Image: Aero Leplastrier. BY DR ALIX POST, GEOSCIENCE AUSTRALIA, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR HELEN BOSTOCK, THE UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND AND MATT MARRISON, CSIRO A team of scientists is plumbing the depths in East Antarctica to increase our understanding of