Recent datasets

This data collection is the common entry point for the intertidal and subtidal benthic seagrass survey datasets of Torres Strait produced by the Centre for Tropical Water & Aquatic Ecosystem Research (TropWATER), James Cook University. For almost two decades the TropWATER Seagrass Group, in collaboration with the Torres Strait Regional Authority (TSRA) Land and Sea Management Unit (LSMU), has mapped and monitored the seagrass meadows of Torres Strait, revisiting one or more regions each year.

This dataset summarises benthic surveys of Western Torres, Torres Strait in December 2020 into 3 GIS shapefiles: (1) The site shapefile describes (a) seagrass presence/absence, (b) species composition, (c) algae cover and (d) benthic macro-invertebrate cover at 542 sites. (2) The meadow shapefile describes subtidal seagrass communities. (3) The interpolation shapefile describes variation in subtidal seagrass biomass across the survey area.

This dataset summarises intertidal benthic surveys of the Eastern Cluster, Torres Strait, in September 2020 into 3 GIS shapefiles. (1) The site shapefile describes (a) seagrass presence/absence, (b) species composition, (c) algae cover and (d) benthic macro-invertebrate cover at 798 sites. (2) The meadow shapefile describes seagrass communities for the intertidal meadows. (3) The interpolation shapefile describes variation in seagrass biomass across sites for the intertidal meadows.

This dataset consists of a small CSV file containing the locations, names and country of the Torres Strait villages associated with the Australian and Papua New Guinea Treaty Protected Zone and neighbouring PNG Treaty villages This dataset is intended for the creation of regional maps. The village locations are not official and were based using satellite imagery to place the village marker on either the centre of the visible village, or the post office location, if that was marked in Google Maps.

This service provides generated summaries (daily, monthly, annual) of the eReefs CSIRO biogeochemistry model v3.1 (https://research.csiro.au/ereefs) outputs at 4km resolution as a Thredds data service. This provides the data as an OPeNDAP service and as NetCDF files (https://thredds.ereefs.aims..../thredds/). The processing is provided by the AIMS eReefs Platform (https://ereefs.aims.gov.au/ereefs-aims).

This dataset summarises intertidal benthic surveys of Kai and Gariar Reefs (Orman Reefs, Torres Strait) in September 2019 into 3 GIS shapefiles. (1) The site shapefile describes (a) seagrass presence/absence and (b) species composition at 124 sites. (2) The meadow shapefile describes seagrass communities for the two reef-top meadows. (3) The interpolation shapefile describes variation in seagrass biomass across sites for the two reef-top meadows.

This dataset summarises intertidal benthic surveys of Kai and Gariar Reefs (Orman Reefs, Torres Strait) in November 2018 into 3 GIS shapefiles. (1) The site shapefile describes (a) seagrass presence/absence and (b) species composition at 124 sites. (2) The meadow shapefile describes seagrass communities for the two reef-top meadows. (3) The interpolation shapefile describes variation in seagrass biomass across sites for the two reef-top meadows.

This dataset and associated data services provide access to modelled 3D environmental conditions of the waters of the Great Barrier Reef and Coral Sea regions. They correspond to generated summaries (daily, monthly, annual, overall) of the eReefs CSIRO hydrodynamic model (v2.0 and v4.0) at both 1km and 4km resolution, along with associated visualisation products. The base eReefs models provide hydrodynamic data with an hourly time interval. This makes the data very large, requiring 630 MB / day for the 4 km grid data and 9.1GB / day for the 1 km grid.

This dataset shows larval connectivities between reefs that exceeded, and did not exceed, thermal thresholds for damage during the 2016/2017 Great Barrier Reef bleaching events. The loss of reproductive adult colonies during bleaching events has the implication that coral cover recovery will require the supply of coral larvae from external sources (other reefs).

This dataset summarises the results of a survey of water quality and suspended solid metal data for ten (10) sites around Saibai and Boigu Islands in the Torres Strait during November 2018. This is the second survey for this project, where the first survey identified the area around Saibai as having elevated metal concentrations compared to other areas of the Torres Strait. This survey was conducted to investigate this finding. Water samples were collected from five sites around Saibai Island and five sites around Boigu Island.

This dataset summarises the results of a survey to determine the concentration of trace metals from mine-derived pollution in marine waters and sediments across the Torres Strait during October 2016. Sampling was performed by a CSIRO team between 3 and 16 October 2016 on board the MV Eclipse. Surface water samples were collected from 21 sites using strict sampling protocols that are designed to minimise contamination (USEPA, 1996; Angel et al., 2010b).

This dataset summarises benthic surveys of seagrass for Dugong and Turtle habitats at Orman Reefs, Torres Strait. The site data describes seagrass coverage estimations at 279 intertidal sites; while the meadow data groups sites into six (6) individual meadows. Data captured includes information on visual estimates for seagrass species, substrate, biomass, diversity, percent cover for benthic macro-invertebrates and algae.

A later version of this dataset exists published 2019-01-18, accessible through the data links on this page. This dataset contains records of sting events and specimen samples of jellyfish (Irukandji) along the north Queensland coast from December 1998 to March 2017. This dataset contains an extract (265 records in CSV format) of the publicly available data contained in the Venomous Jellyfish Database. The full database contains approximately 3000 sting events from around Australia and includes records from sources that have not yet been cleared for release.

This dataset consists of a shapefile of the reefs, islands, sand banks, cays and rocks of the whole Great Barrier Reef (GBR) including Torres Strait. This dataset is an extension of the mapping in the GBR Marine Park to include Torres Strait. The Torres Strait region was mapped at a scale of 1:50,000 (Lawrey, E. P., Stewart M., 2016) and these new features are referred to as the "Torres Strait Reef and Island Features" dataset.

This metadata is a brief overview of the National Environmental Science Program Tropical Water Quality (NESP TWQ) Hub. The aim of the National Environmental Science Programme (NESP) is to assist decision-makers to understand, manage and conserve Australia’s environment by funding world-class biodiversity and climate science.

As part of the NERP TE project 2.3 temperature loggers were deployed at 15 sites across Torres Strait to measure the sea temperature. The loggers regularly measure the sea water temperature and record it in their memory. Every year or so the loggers are swapped with new loggers and the recorded data is extracted and recorded in the AIMS Real Time Data Systems database as part of the Australia wide Sea Temperature Observing System.

This dataset shows the geology of the Torres Strait region. The polygons in this dataset are a digital representation of the distribution or extent of geological units within the area. Polygons have a range of attributes including unit name, age, lithological description and an abbreviated symbol for use in labelling the polygons. These have been extracted from the Rock Units Table held in the Department of Natural Resources, Mines and Energy Merlin Database.

This dataset is a composite of Landsat 5 satellite imagery to produce a cloud free, clear water seamless image of the Torres Strait region. This image includes some of Cape York and PNG, in particular the Fly river. This composite shows clear imagery for marine areas, in particular reefs, larger islands and sand bars. This image has a resolution of approximately 30 m and a positional accuracy of better than 50 m. There is a new similar dataset based on higher resolution Sentinel 2 imagery: Lawrey, E. (2022).

This dataset shows the point location of communities on Torres Strait Islands. There are 18 Islands in the Torres Strait and 19 Communities. St Pauls and Kubin villages are both located on Moa Island. Each point includes an URL attribute pointing to the community pages on the TSRA website.

This dataset shows the extent of the dugong sanctuary in the Torres Strait which prohibits the taking of dugong (area, gear and method restrictions). The dugong sanctuary is a legislative boundary which is outlined in the Torres Strait Fisheries Management Notice No. 65 http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Det...007B00345 . This dataset is for research purposes and is not authoritative. Refer to the legislation for the authoritative definition of the sanctuary.

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