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Research Voyages

Voyage to the Gulf of Carpentaria

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THE VOYAGERS

Matching creatures and sediments

Alix Post seeks geological clues to
what lives where, and why

Dr Alix Post

Dr Vicki Passlow

Dr Alix Post is a marine geoscientist at Geoscience Australia in Canberra. She joined the organisation in 2002 as a graduate, and now works in the Seabed Mapping and Characterisation group.

Her work is focussed on northern Australia, where she studies the interactions between the physical properties of the seabed and the distribution and diversity of macrofauna. She also studies microfossils, to interpret longer-term changes in climate and the marine environment.

Dr Post’s interest in marine micropaleontology began at the University of Tasmania, where she completed an Honours degree in 1998, and a PhD in 2004. Her studies then were focussed on much colder environments, in the sub-Antarctic Southern Ocean. So voyages to tropical waters are a welcome change.

She and her Geoscience Australia project leader Vicki Passlow will collect ‘box-cores’ from each sampling station on the Southern Surveyor voyage. These will be sub-sampled with a mini-core to look at the changes in sediment composition through time.

They also will filter water samples to look at the nature of the sediments that are in suspension at the surface and the bottom of the water column.

"This voyage provides a great opportunity to increase our understanding of what lives where, and why," Dr Post says. “I’m looking forward to meeting some of the critters that live on the sediments that we geologists are so fond of collecting.

"This is the first voyage I’ve been on with so many biologists onboard. We are interested to see whether our combined knowledge can be applied to predicting biological distributions based on physical data, such as sediment composition."

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Updated: 29/03/07