AIMS, the Australian Institute of Marine Science…..
sounds like a very smart place, doesn’t it? Like a
place full of mad scientists, with slightly long graying hair and
spectacles that sit on the end of their noses, walking around
carrying test tubes wearing white lab coats. The pinnacle of marine
science, a world wide leading agent in marine biology
research…. Wow! Just the thought of walking in the door
scares me a little bit through humble acknowledgment.
But no! it’s not all about test tubes, lab coats and
spectacles. They actually have to go out into the marine
environment to get stuff to look at in their labs. A lab
is all good and very, well, sciencey , but what the
researchers at AIMS actually want to achieve is knowledge about the
world under the water, and the only way to get that knowledge is to
go out there and check it out…
I was lucky enough to join a team of marine biologists on a
field trip out on the Whitsundays in September 07. I just love
saying that, it makes me sound really smart too (if I pretend that
I’m a world class marine research conducting a very smart and
important study and not just a volunteer). A whole week of sailing
round the glorious Whitsunday Islands on board the AIMS Research
Vessel, the Cape Ferguson, doing very smart and important
things under the water of the beautiful Coral Sea.
 |
|
With Dr Stephen Lewis about to go hunting for
‘coreable’ corals (photo courtesy of Eric Matson)
|
The aim of the trip was to undertake coral core sampling for two
research projects belonging to Dr Stephen Lewis from James Cook
University and Dr Stacy Jupiter from the Australian National
University. The AIMS Cape Ferguson research vessel, along
with two of the AIMS technical crew – Eric Matson and Damien
Thomson – were engaged for the job.
So, coral core sampling eh? Something to do with the cores of
corals you say? Corals have cores ? This is the stuff that
gives AIMS the smart factor – that impressive sciencey stuff.
An explanation in terms suitable for those of us who don’t
have lab coats in our wardrobes:
Corals do actually have growth rings, a bit like a tree - each
year they develop a new layer of calcium carbonate a centimeter or
so thick and grow bigger. The idea of a coral core is to use a
drill powered by compressed air and literally core into
the coral. A cylindrical sample of (in this case) about 50cm long
can then be removed. This core has growth rings, or bands, which
represent a season of growth. Porities corals are used for
this exercise as they are big mummas – growing up to six
meters, they can be 600 years old!
These growth rings become very distinctive when viewed under
ultra violet light. They can then be geochemically analysed –
that is, broken down into different elemental ratios – to
reveal a wealth of information about past and present environmental
conditions. From one core, scientists can tell what the salinity
was like in a particular year; or how much sediment was in the
water, or even what the temperature was. That means that the big
mumma of 6 meters is storing around 600 years worth of data!
But so what? Who cares what the salinity was in 1983! Why is
that important? Well, it’s quite simple really. By
correlating this chemical data to things happening on the land, we
can figure out exactly what effects our land use practices have on
the water all the way out in the Great Barrier Reef. For example,
we can correlate increased sediment load with land development, or
changes in chemical composition with farming practices. We can also
correlate the data with the weather – decreased salinity with
flood events or cyclones, and water temperatures with climate
variability. Kind of important actually, when you think about how
these corals are literally acting as little vaults of information
on the environment they’ve lived through all these years and
the changes that are happening.
 |
|
AIMS technical officers Damien Thomson and Eric
Matson using specially designed underwater drills to capture a core
(photo courtesy of Dr Stacy Jupiter)
|
But these very valuable little coral cores are not easy to come
by, or cheap! To get them one must have lots of equipment (things
like core breakers and catchers and drills and base plates –
do I sound smart again?), technical skills (trying to delicately
drill a hole in something on land is hard enough, imagine doing it
under 6m of water) and of course a big boat to carry it all. When
worked out on a core per time basis, they come out to be worth
about $2000 each! Thank god I didn’t drop one when I was
ferrying one from the sample site to the boat.
Oh and the boat! I walked on to this ‘research
vessel’ expecting… well actually I had no idea what to
expect. Something sciencey. But I was most pleasantly
surprised… a lounge room with a DVD player and lots of DVDs!
And a mini library of books to chill out on the deck with, about 15
different flavours of herbal tea, Milo on tap, freshly cooked
morning and afternoon tea every day by the cook, and the best part?
Little jars of different lollies and chocolates that magically
refilled themselves when I wasn't looking.
But let me not misguide you – it was not all frolicking in
the Coral Sea in between cups of tea and cake and Oprah before
watching the sun go down on the deck with a mug of hot Milo. It was
hard work! Six hours in the water a day searching for bommies and
then doing the coring leaves one resembling a shriveled prune and
having lips like a cat’s bottom. And I tell you – after
a week of lifting scuba tanks, ferrying big pieces of metal
equipment through water and pulling up boat anchors, the Les Mills
classes at the gym seem pathetic . I crawled into my
(dolphin doona cover clad) bunk every night absolutely
shattered.
And I loved every single minute of it! Cruising round the
Whitsundays for that week was definitely a week of my life well
spent. As we moored just off Lindeman Island for the night and
watched the lights of the 5 star hotel glitter, I swelled with
pride knowing the next morning I would be pulling on my wetsuit and
hooning around the island in our little field boat, searching for
corals to core that would give environmental scientists invaluable
information to help protect the Great Barrier Reef.
And a note about the mad scary scientists…. Not made or
scary at all, not one lab coat or end of nose sitting spectacles in
site. In fact I'm quite sure I was the mad one.