Water quality monitoring, Halifax Bay, north Queensland: Dec 2012 - May 2013

Water quality information from Halifax Bay off Townsville was collected from the 20th of December 2012 to the 1st of May 2013 under a contract with GBRMPA.Data was collected from a YSI 6600V2 sonde that included salinity, water temperature, chlorophyll-a, and turbidity. The buoy also had a real time GPS. Data from the Cleveland Bay Automatic Weather Station was used to provide above water meteorological data such as air temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction, barometric pressure and rainfall.Data was collected in real time every 10 minutes and transmitted via nextG to AIMS and then into the Loggernet / AIMS systems.A dedicated web site was set up to allow access to the data to GBRMPA, weekly excel data digests were also delivered along with a final report on the project. The data had two purposes. The first was general monitoring over the summer period of the conditions in Halifax Bay. The second was to look at potential run-off from the Yabulu nickel smelter, especially for caustic material from a holding pond.