Tropical marine Australia is renowned for its challenging conditions, characterized by strong ocean currents, vast expanses of remote ocean, and extreme tropical weather. The Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) hosts ReefWorks, Australia’s tropical marine technology test range located near Townsville. Serving as a collaborative ecosystem, ReefWorks facilitates industry and research technological testing requirements, attracting uncrewed system operators and instrument manufacturers globally to validate their solutions in a highly instrumented testing environment.
To meet the diverse testing requirements, a solution integrating both real-time current and water quality information is proposed. Recent advancements in real-time underwater communication and machine-assisted data analysis have enabled seamless integration of standard communication protocols into oceanographic marine sensing. Leveraging the capabilities of the new Origin 600 Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP), we successfully integrated the Sonardyne Nano-Modem with a YSI DB600 water quality data buoy to obtain real-time oceanographic data on the range. Data processing and automatic alert notification through the Eagle.io dashboard enabled the observation of oceanographic phenomena over a 3-month period, including the recent passage of Cyclone Kirrily.
This presentation explores the opportunities and challenges associated with integrating connectivity capabilities, combining underwater and surface marine technologies to capture marine observations in extreme tropical environments.