We have been incredibly busy over the past few months putting together an educational program on Healthy Water Ways, thanks to funding from SEQWater in Queensland.

The program is designed to educate school age children as well as the wider community in general, in the importance of healthy natural water ways, along with a water conservation message from "Dougy the Water Drop". 

The Centre for Aquatic Research has put together the educational programs, and with the assistance of the funding from SEQWater, has purchased the laboratory equipment. We have also partnered with OceanStars who will deliver the programs around South East Queensland for us. The funding received will also go towards providing the program for free to the first 20 schools or community groups that book the program. 

The Centres educational members Rebecca Davis, Erin Wyatt, and Christine Buckius have spent the past few months busily collecting water bugs, designing classification keys, putting together presentations, and escorting Dougy around the Gold Coast, filming his message to the community.

Be sure to keep an eye out for Dougy, and the crew at OceanStars if you are in South East Queensland, and if you do see them, be sure to come over and say Hi!

If you would like to help contribute to the education of our children and the community, all donations are greatly appreciated and 100% of all donations go towards our charitable scope which can be found HERE

We stumbled across this awesome school of convict surgeonfish (Acanthurus triostegus) and black-finned triggerfish (Melichthys indicus) while on a recent snorkel on a coral reef. These fish play a vital role in reef health by constantly grazing on algae and coral. Triggerfish quite often eat parts of the coral skeleton which pass through the fish and come out the other end as coral sand.

Underwater Photogrammetry is proving to be an extremely powerful tool for aquatic habitat research. Being able to accurately map an ecosystem and measure important parameters over time will enable us to dramatically increase the amount of data we collect in any given time. 

Check out the 3D underwater model we have put together from a reef in the Indian Ocean.

Click HERE to interact with the 3D model and manipulate it in 3D space.

The Australian Charities and Not for Profit Commission has officially endorsed the Centre for Aquatic Research as a Research Charity. This means that we are recognised as an organisation that is operating in the charitable interests of Education and the Environment.

With this milestone achieved, we are now putting in place our research plans for some initial aquatic environments. These plans will allow us to ground truth our improvements to aquatic research techniques that are currently used throughout the research industry. One of these techniques involves creating photo realistic 3D maps of the aquatic environment allowing researchers to gather important data such as species diversity, habitat structure, complexity, and even monitor phenomenon such as climate change.

The Centre for Aquatic Research has officially launched.