South-west Corner Marine Park survey – bathymetry (GA-4858)

Full description

This resource includes bathymetry data for South-west Corner Marine Park collected by Geoscience Australia during the periods 9 – 12 March 2020 and 27 January – 16 February 2021 on the charter vessel Santosha. The survey was undertaken as a collaborative project with the University of Western Australia, the University of Tasmania and the Australian Centre for Field Robotics (University of Sydney), and funded through the National Environmental Science Program Marine Biodiversity Hub, with co-investment by all partners and the Director of National Parks. The purpose of the project was to build baseline information for benthic habitats on the continental shelf in the marine park that will support ongoing environmental monitoring within the South-West Marine Park Network as part of the 10-year management plan (2018-2028). Data acquisition for the project included multibeam bathymetry and backscatter for an area covering 330 km^2 (excluding transit) offshore from Cape Naturaliste to Cape Leeuwin coast, with underwater imagery of benthic communities and demersal fish collected by the University of Western Australia on separate field deployments. This bathymetry dataset contains a 5 m resolution 32-bit geotiff file of the survey area produced from the processed Kongsberg EM2040C multibeam sonar system using CARIS HIPS and SIPS software. For further information see: Giraldo-Ospina, A. et al., 2021. South-west Corner Marine Park Post Survey Report. Report to the National Environmental Science Program, Marine Biodiversity Hub.

This dataset is not to be used for navigational purposes.

Lineage

Maintenance and Update Frequency: asNeeded

Statement: This is a V1 product for GA-4858. The Chief scientist onboard was Dr Scott Nicholl in 2020 and Mr Aero Leplastrier on the charter vessel Santosha. This dataset was produced using CARIS HIPS/SIPS version 11.3.12. For any metadata questions, please download the Metadata.txt file located with the dataset. Processing methodology: Following the CARIS HIPS/SIPS workflow, 1. A vessel configuration file was created where the co-ordinates of the motion sensor, DGPS antenna and patch test offsets were recorded. 2. A new project was created and the vessel configuration file attached to the project file. 3. The raw swath sonar data files, in raw.all format, for each line was imported into the project and the vessel information assigned to the data. EGM2008 is our first preference and when not available or possible to do so, a tidal zone data is the next preference to be applied to the data. 4. The motion sensor, DGPS and heading data were cleaned using a filter that averaged adjacent data to remove artefacts. 5. Sound velocity profiles data for each block of data were attached to the corresponding raw swath sonar data files. 6. A new blank surface area was defined that specified the geographic area of study and the co-ordinate system used. 7. The data was cleaned by applying several filters that removed any spikes in the data using user defined threshold values. 8. Data were inspected visually for each line where artifacts and noisy data had not removed by the filtering process. 9. Remaining spikes were removed manually using the swath and subset editor modules. 10. All the data, i.e. bathymetric sounding and ancillary data, were merged to produce the final processed data file. 11. A weighted grid of the processed data was then created. 12. Independent velocity corrections were performed where velocity artefacts were observed. 13. The final processed grid was exported as a 32 bit Geotif format at 5 m resolution referenced to EGM2008 (~ to mean sea level).

Notes

Purpose
South-west Corner Marine Park survey