Sustainable finfish aquaculture is dependent on a benthic environment that can assimilate and process farm particulate wastes. In Macquarie Harbour, bottom and mid water Dissolved Oxygen levels have reached very low levels, which is associated with an increase in the presence of bacterial mats and a significant decline in the abundance and diversity of benthic fauna. Dissolved Oxygen levels are a major determinant of the response of benthic communities in the harbour over timescales of months to years. This dataset consists of data collected by the real-time dissolved oxygen (DO) monitoring system deployed at three locations in Macquarie Harbour, Tasmania. Loggers were originally established under the Sense-T program, continued under FRDC project 2016-067, and deployed and maintained by IMAS. The system consists of 3 strings of acoustically telemetered, optical fluorescence DO, temperature and depth sensors (VEMCO, Bedford, Canada) which measure DO (% saturation) and temperature (°C) across a depth gradient. Data collected from 01-01-2017 to 19-04-2017 consists of data was collected using the first generation of sensors, while data subsequent to 03-06-2017 was collected using a new generation of tags which contain a tilt instead of a depth sensor.

Sustainable finfish aquaculture is dependent on a benthic environment that can assimilate and process farm particulate wastes. In Macquarie Harbour, bottom and mid water Dissolved Oxygen levels have reached very low levels, which is associated with an increase in the presence of bacterial mats and a significant decline in the abundance and diversity of benthic fauna. Dissolved Oxygen levels are a major determinant of the response of benthic communities in the harbour over timescales of months to years. This dataset consist of dissolved oxygen (DO) and temperature data collected using HOBO Dissolved Oxygen loggers (U26-001) deployed at two locations in Macquarie Harbour, Tasmania under FRDC project 2016-067.

These data describe quantitative exposure indices generated using cartographic fetch methods on a 0.01 degree grid across temperate Australia (South Australia, Victoria and Tasmania). Two indices are reported: openness and bathymetry-altered fetch. Openness is a measure of the distance of a site to the nearest coastline in all directions and describes potential exposure to locally generated seas and undefined swell. Bathymetry-altered fetch attempts to account for the attenuation of wave energy as waves move into shallow waters and encounter friction with the seafloor.