Introduction

The Lucinda Jetty Coastal Observatory (LJCO) is located on the end of the 5.8 km long Lucinda Jetty (18.52 S, 146.39 E) in the coastal waters of the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area close to the Herbert River Estuary and the Hinchinbrook Channel.

LJCO provides optical characterization of tropical coastal waters and atmosphere, and will be a major source of measurements for the validation of coastal-ocean colour radiometric and biogeochemical products in complex waters.

Underwater optics

The underwater optical package was deployed on October 28 2009. The package consists of four  sensors and associated hardware.

The WETLabs WQM measures Conductivity, temperature, pressure, dissolved oxygen,chlorophyll fluorescence and turbidity

A WETLabs WETStar fluorometer measures coloured dissolved organic matter fluorescence

A WETLabs ac-smeasures particulate and dissolved absorption and attenuation spectral coefficients

A WETLabs BB9 is used to measure total backscattering coefficients

Above-water radiometry

Two above-water radiometers were deployed on 28 October 2009

A Satlantic HyperOCR provides hyperspectral measurements of downwelling irradiance.

The CIMEL SeaPRISM is an autonomous radiometer that performs marine radiometric measurements for determining water leaving radiances as well as atmospheric observations for retrieving aerosol optical properties.

Two web cameras are also mounted on the roof to provide images of local conditions.

Instrument telemetry

Data is acquired in real time by the Linux Server and

PC installed on site

The raw data-stream is uploaded via NextG broadband to CSIRO’s data storage in Canberra where it is preprocessed and QA/QC-ed

Near-real-time data will be distributed to the community via the IMOS Ocean Portal

Radiometry data (SeaPRISM) will also be available on NASA’s AERONET-OC website