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Called SURVOSTRAL (Surveillance of the Ocean Austral), the joint Australian-French-US program has produced a 15-year dataset based on readings taken by the volunteers and crew of the 65-metre French ship, L’Astrolabe, on regular voyages between Hobart and the French base at Dumont D’Urville.

The expansion of coastal urban development places increasing pressure on the natural environment through the effects of land clearing, waste disposal and pollution. Building along the foreshore and on sand dunes can affect the coastal landscape, coastal processes, and the natural movement of sand. Structures built on the coastline can increase erosion, leading to the need for beach replenishment. Coastal planning and management is now being undertaken to try to take into account these physical processes to avoid further erosion. As well as increased erosion, coastal communities are also vulnerable to rising sea levels, tropical cyclones and a loss of wetlands. In addition, the discharge of sewage and stormwater, land run-off, groundwater, and river inputs of nutrients and sediments to estuaries and the coastal waters constitutes one of Australia's greatest coastal management challenges (NLWRA 2002).

Investigator has a wide range of equipment to support physical oceanography including CTD systems with 24 and 36 bottle sampling rosettes, two acoustic transducers to measure ocean currents, on board chemical, biological, and biogeochemical laboratories fitted with general purpose clean and trace metal clean seawater outlets.

Oceanographic Services in the Bureau of Meteorology encompasses a wide range of information, data and products related to the physical state of the ocean and its constituents, including inputs for weather and climate monitoring and prediction, and global and regional seasonal and longer term climate prediction, as well as support for tactical activities of the Australian Defence Force, data and prediction services for resource and environmental management, and information for coastal and open ocean industry operations and activities.