SIMS

Sea squirts in Sydney Harbour. The white species is invasive, competing for space with the pink natives.
© 2009 David Paul

Oceans cover 71% of the Earth's surface. They are a fundamental life sustaining feature of our planet, absorbing heat and circulating it around the globe to regulate our climate. The heat capacity of the top three metres of the ocean is equivalent to that of the whole of the atmosphere.

Australia's ocean jurisdiction is one of the largest in the world, larger than our total land area, yet is poorly known. Forecasts of future climate change rely critically on our understanding ocean processes.

Our marine and coastal environments are facing an unprecedented range of threats. The scale and diversity of marine research urgently needs to increase to match the scale and diversity of the threats. The demand for marine science graduates now well exceeds supply. These threats may be triggering a major transition in our marine ecosystems - "the rise of the microbes" - which is predicted to increase the incidence and severity of disease in marine organisms such as kelp and corals.

Experience at internationally recognised facilities (e.g. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the National Oceanographic Institution in the UK) shows that the synergies needed to develop multidisciplinary marine research can only be developed if the work is undertaken at a dedicated marine science campus where scientists from different backgrounds have access to a broad communal knowledge base.

SIMS will make a major contribution to marine science. Much of its work will have world-wide applicability.

• The SIMS model is for a single collaborative campus bringing together the diverse skills from all of the institutions associated with SIMS. This is the best possible model for world-class marine research.


• SIMS' scientists cover a broad spectrum of the marine sciences, and will carry out multidisciplinary research that will encompass a broad range of the challenges facing us.


• Management of the marine and coastal environment in the context of urban and industrial development is one of the central challenges facing planners today. SIMS' location at Chowder Bay, in Australia's largest urban estuary, is an ideal place from which to study and address the impacts of urbanisation and industrialisation.


• The East Australian Current - which is now emerging as a bellwether of ocean warming - increasingly flows past Sydney and southern NSW. Indeed the increase in temperature in the Tasman Sea, approximately 3° in the last hundred years, is one of the highest in the world. SIMS therefore is ideally placed to research the impacts of climate change on Australia's coastal environments.


• SIMS' role as a research trainer and teacher will add to the supply of marine scientists by encouraging many more PhD candidates to work at SIMS and by conducting a range of post-graduate specialty marine courses.