Australasian Hydrographic Society

News
The AHS has pleasure in drawing the attention of the worldwide Hydro/MetOceano community to the inaugural ‘Maritime Australia Award’, administered by the ANI/CMP. It is in the form of a two-year grant of AU$ 12,000 each year for research or development in a maritime activity, which will of course embrace all the activities in which readers of this publication are interested. It is open to all individuals, institutions and companies other than government departments and agencies, and is not available for research etc, tied to obtaining or improving an academic degree. It is not limited to any nationality, but the research or development must be in a field that is beneficial to Australia. Application forms and full details of conditions etc, can be obtained by contacting Commodore James Goldrick at james. [email protected] or Professor Martin Tsamenyi tsamenyi @uow.edu.au. Applications for this year will close on 31st October 2005.

West Australia Region
It is very pleasing to note the report that WAR is co-operating with the Society for Underwater Technology and arranging joint events; more on this in the next edition. The WAR held a very well attended general meeting at the Blue Note Tavern, Fremantle on 28th July 2005, with two speakers from University of Western Australia. The first, Andy Bickers of the Marine Science Group, gave an excellent overview of how, with the development of multi-beam and side-scan sonar mapping systems, in concert with advances in positioning systems and underwater video, our ability to map the seafloor has fundamentally changed. We can now have views of the seabed in unprecedented detail, that revolutionise our understanding of seafloor processes in much the same way that airborne and satellite-derived imagery has revolutionised our understanding of terrestrial pro-cesses. To put it into perspective one must realise that today we can record up to 1,500,000 soundings per hour, whereas in the days of sailing ships and lead lines we could only record ten soundings per hour in 100m water depths. The second presentation, by Emeritus Professor Reginald Appleyard took us back from the present day to hear about the last four hundred years of interesting history of the early European arrivals on the Australian coast. He also brought to our attention the coming ‘AOTM’ and plans for the 2006 programme of local, state, national and international events. See www.australiaonthemap.org.au/index.html?Australasian

East Australia Region
The Sydney Ports Corporation, at its headquarters at Moores Wharf, Sydney, kindly hosted a General Meeting of the East Australia Region on Tuesday 9th August 2005. Our chairman, John Maschke, made the more than marathon Canberra / Sydney / Canberra drive, 376 miles, to be in attendance. We had the great pleasure of the company of Ruth Adams, head of Additional Military Layers at the United Kingdom Hydrographic Office, Taunton, who is currently visiting Australian hydrographic centres. The routine administrative matters were despatched promptly, allowing us time to dwell with pleasure on the fruitful talks on a closer relationship currently taking place between the Australasian Hydrographic Society (AHS) and the Australian Hydrographic Association (AHA). The AHA has been in existence for many years, has a vibrant membership made up of water authorities, civilian hydrographic organisations and private companies, in general more concerned with the freshwater environment than the saltwater. This closer relationship conforms very well with the decision taken in May 1998 by the Council of the former Hydrographic Society (THS) to drop the IHO definition of Hydrography with its bias towards charting and navigation and adopt a simpler one. This is "The use and application of technology in the measurement and presentation of spatial data in the marine and freshwater environments", with appropriate objectives, (See Hydrographic Journal, July 1998, page 28).

Early preparations for Hydro 2007 were discussed, this being an EAR responsibility. The event will be run in conjunction with the Royal Australian Navy Hydrographic Service's Hydrographic symposium and will take place in Cairns, Queensland, from the 10th to17th September 2007. The meeting concluded with a discussion on the ‘Standards for Hydrographic Surveys within Queensland Waters’ being published by the Maritime Safety Division of Queensland Transport. The standards are based on a risk-management philosophy rather than hard and fast rules and conditions. It beggars the belief of this author that much the same document may now be going to be produced by the remaining five states and the Northern Territory.
Surely Australian Maritime Safety Authority or similar, could have produced a Federal Edition with State annexes where needed?

New Zealand Region
The NZ Region AGM will take place at 11:00 on Wed 12th October 2005, in the Billiard Room, University of Otago, Dunedin, followed at 14:00 by a Seminar in the Lecture Theatre, School of Surveying, when the following papers will be presented:

1. What is the use of tide-gauge data?
   
2. The hydrographer and dredging operations.
   
3. Squat prediction for Kakariki in Otago Harbour.
   
4. Overview of Coastal Marine Group's hydrographic survey methods.
   
5. Multi-beam mapping for marine environment management.
   
6. Clutha River flood-plain Lidar survey and channel bathymetry.

Contact
Australasian Hydrographic Society
Att. E. R. Whitmore
4/6 Carrington Street
Wahroonga, New South Wales
2076, Australia
Tel: +61 2 94892091
Fax: +61 2 94892048