On the FRV Southern Surveyor cruise SS3/90, 108 stations throughout the Gulf of Carpentaria were sampled for sea temperature, salinity, water depth, and sediment grain size. Data was also collected from the 1989-1990 "Jacqueline D" cruises and from commercial trawlers. Relevant rainfall, wind and temperature data were obtained from the Meteorological Bureau.

Data on primary productivity in the water column was collected during a 1988 cruise aboard the FRV "Franklin" in the Gulf of Carpentaria. Twenty stations were sampled.

Seagrass biomass, density and morphometrics were measured at sites around Groote Eylandt and Albatross Bay in the Gulf of Carpentaria. Environmental data such as depth were also collected at a number of sites. Transect data was collected to give a qualitative assessment of these parameters.

This dataset is the result of a series of trawl surveys carried out aboard F.V. Maxim between August 1983 and March 1985 in the NW Gulf of Carpentaria, north of Groote Eylandt. The main reference is by Somers et al (1987) - see References link below. It details the gear, methods, study area, etc. The data collected included abundance and size composition of the commercial species of penaeids together with data on hydrology at the time of sampling, across 60 stations. Reproductive stage, moult stage, and parasites were also recorded. Cruises were carried out every four weeks centred around the new moon period.

Water physical and chemical data were collected using current meter and bottle casts from the GILLISS and other platforms from February 4, 1976 to September 14, 1976. Data were submitted by Virginia Institute of Marine Science - Gloucester Point, as part of the Ocean Continental Shelf - Mid Atlantic (OCS - Mid Atlantic) project. Data were processed by NODC to the NODC standard Current Meter Data (F015) format. The F014 format is designed to support studies of physical and chemical observations on the water column. Reported are measurements of temperature, salinity, conductivity, dissolved oxygen, nitrate, nitrite, ammonia, orthophosphate, and organic carbon. The format consists of four data record types, 80 characters in length, sorted by station and sequence numbers for proper order. The first nine columns for all records are to be used for file type (columns 1-3) and file identifier (columns 4-9). The file identifier, to be assigned by the originator, is an unique originator id for each data submission. After submission, the NODC reassigns to this field an unique NODC identifier for internal use.

Data was collected on Southern Surveyor voyage SS 04/2003. The voyage took place in Northern Queensland coastal waters and the Gulf of Carpentaria during May - June 2003. The data was culminated in a Post cruise report. Access to this report is available via the links below.

This dataset summarises 40 years of seagrass data collection (1983-2022) within Torres Strait and the Gulf of Carpentaria into two GIS shapefiles: (1) a point shapefile that includes survey data for 48,612 geolocated sites, and (2) a polygon geopackage describing seagrass at 641 individual or composite meadows. Managing seagrass resources in northern Australia requires adequate baseline information on where seagrass is (presence/absence), the mapped extent of meadows, what species are present, and date of collection. This baseline is particularly important as a reference point against which to compare seagrass loss or change through time. The scale of northern Australia and the remoteness of many seagrass meadows from human populations present a challenge for research and management agencies reporting on the state of seagrass ecological indicators. Broad-scale and repeated surveys/studies of areas are logistically and financially impractical. However seagrass data is being collected through various projects which, although designed for specific reasons, are amenable to collating a picture of the extent and state of the seagrass resource. In this project we compiled seagrass spatial data collected during surveys in Torres Strait and the Gulf of Carpentaria into a standardised form with point-specific and meadow-specific spatial and temporal information. We revisited, evaluated, simplified, standardised, and corrected individual records, including those collected several decades ago by drawing on the knowledge of one of our authors (RG Coles) who led the early seagrass data collection and mapping programs. We also incorporate new data, such as from photo records of an aerial assessment of mangroves in the Gulf of Carpentaria in 2017. This project was funded by the National Environmental Science Programme (NESP) Marine and Coastal Hub and Torres Strait Regional Authority (TSRA) in partnership with the Centre for Tropical Water and Aquatic Ecosystem Research (TropWATER), James Cook University. The project follows on from TropWATER’s previous work compiling 35 years of seagrass spatial point data and 30 years of seagrass meadow extent data for the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area (GBRWHA) and adjacent estuaries, funded through successive NESP Tropical Water Quality Hub Projects 3.1 (2015-2016) and 5.4 (2018-2020). These data sets are now publicly available through the eAtlas data portal: https://doi.org/10.25909/y1yk-9w85 . In making this data publicly available for management, the authors and data custodians request being contacted and involved in decision making processes that incorporate this data, to ensure its limitations are fully understood. Methods: The data were collected using a variety of survey methods to describe and monitor seagrass sites and meadows. For intertidal sites/meadows, these include walking, observations from helicopters in low hover, and observations from hovercraft when intertidal banks were exposed. For subtidal sites/meadows, methods included free diving, scuba diving, video transects from towed cameras attached to a sled with/without a sled net, video drops with filmed quadrats, trawl and net samples, and van Veen grab samples. These methods were selected and tailored by the data custodians to the location, habitat surveyed, and technology available. Important site and method descriptions and contextual information is contained in the original trip reports and publications for each data set provided in Table 1 of Carter et al. (2022). Geographic Information System (GIS) Mapping data for historic records (1980s) were transcribed from original logged and mapped data based on coastal topography, dead reckoning fixes and RADAR estimations. More recent data (1990’s onwards) is GPS located. All spatial data were converted to shapefiles with the same coordinate system (GDA 1994 Geoscience Australia Lambert), then compiled into a single point shapefile and a single polygon shapefile (seagrass meadows)

This dataset contains 62 sets of data collected as part of Shipboard Environmental data Acquisition System (SEAS) III program. The cruises were conducted using 37 different ships. The bathythermograph (XBT) data was collected between November 11, 1991 and November 21, 1992. The data was sent from the cruise ships to the National Ocean Service, Rockville, MD via telecommunication. This data is currently available in the C116 file format of NODC.

This data set contains hydrographic data collected during cruise KM0703 in the tropical and subtropical Southwest Pacific. Leg 1 of the cruise began in Townsville, Australia and sampled the Coral Sea, a transect southward toward the Tasman Sea, and a transect northward toward New Caledonia, with twelve hydro stations (001-012). Leg 2 included a run eastward to 170 deg W, a northward run to 15 deg S, then a transect to the east before ending in Suva, Fiji after carrying out fourteen stations (013-026). Repeated casts at a single station are identified with a sequence number following the decimal. For example, the first sampling event at station 022 is numbered 022.01, the second is numbered 022.03, etc.

This dataset contains 49 sets of data collected as part of Shipboard Environmental data Acquisition System (SEAS) III program. The cruises were conducted using 31 different ships. The bathythermograph (XBT) data was collected between December 12, 1991 and February 25, 1993. The data was sent from the cruise ships to the National Ocean Service, Rockville, MD via telecommunication. This data is currently available in the C116 file format of NODC.