A virtual tour of the RV Southern Surveyor,
Australia's National Research vessel
In 2005 MESA vice-President and SA Rep Alex Gaut attended the Australian Marine Sciences Association Annual Conference in Darwin in mid-July.

One of the highlights of her time at the conference was the opportunity to go aboard the CSIRO’s research vessel, the RV Southern Surveyor.

Take a virtual tour of the RV Southern Surveyor with these photographs:

The RV Southern Surveyor has two sets of controls. One set is used for controlling the ship whilst travelling and the other set used to control the ship while it is stationary or undertaking dredging/trawling activities.

This image shows the front controls (with Dr Sasi Nayar from SARDI looking out the front windows).

Looking out onto the back deck.

You can see how the deck is cluttered with many different kinds of equipment.

This is a CTD sampler – conductivity (for salinity), temperature, depth. These samplers have been used for a long time by oceanographers and biologists alike, to find out the conditions at different depths of the oceans.

In the background you can see the sampling bottles that can be computer-controlled to open and take a sample at pre-set depths.

This is the side of the fish lab. The RV Southern Surveyor is an ex-fishing ship from the North Sea, so this fish lab was originally the room where freshly caught fish were headed and gutted.

This room did not have to be changed when the ship was changed for research purposes. At the far end of the rollers you can see a small hatch where the fish are pushed through.

These fish preparation tables are immediately next to the rollers in the previous picture so that the fish can be grabbed from the rollers and prepared for research and storage by scientists.

Much of the work that is done is undertaken by computers (for example, bathymetry). There is an incredible computer lab of which this is just a small part.

When the bathymetric data logger is in full flow it creates terabytes of data each day, so the ships technicians and managers are constantly challenged by data storage problems.

I did not get pictures of the living quarters but the ship is fully equipped to take 12-15 scientists (depending on the number of technicians required) sharing a number of well-equipped bunk cabins.

The Chief Scientist gets a large cabin suite. There is an excellent kitchen as well as two laundry rooms and a living area for R&R. There are many other rooms that I could not show you, unfortunately.