The AUSCAN Voyage
Participants
The AUSCAN voyage had some of Australia's best marine scientists uncovering the mysteries of Australia's grand canyons. Read all about them here.
Neville Exon
Dr Neville Exon is the Research Group Leader for Geoscience Australia's Marine Geoscience and Environment Group.
After six years in the 1960s, geologically mapping sedimentary basins in Queensland, he completed a doctorate in marine geology in Kiel, Germany, in 1971. Moving gradually into marine geoscience, Neville has worked mainly on the North-West Shelf and south-east Australian regions, and the south-west Pacific. He has published over 130 refereed papers and numerous other reports on marine geology and geophysics, sedimentary basins, petroleum geology and offshore minerals.
Since 1985, Neville has been heavily involved in the south-east Australian offshore region, both in nine research cruises (often as Chief Scientist) and in papers and reports analysing the offshore sedimentary sequences. His research has involved the Otway and Gippsland basins and the various Tasmanian offshore basins as far south as the South Tasman Rise.
In total, Neville has participated in over 35 research cruises around the world on various vessels, and in two Ocean Drilling Program coring expeditions.
Peter J. Hill
Peter Hill is a Senior Research Scientist in the Petroleum & Marine Division of Geoscience Australia in Canberra.
He has widespread geophysical experience, onshore in Australia, Antarctica and PNG, and offshore in the Australian region, and has published about 75 papers in refereed journals. He is a seagoing geophysicist, specialising in seabed swath-mapping and seismic acquisition and interpretation, and has participated in 30 Australian and international research expeditions.
He presently leads the geophysical component of Geoscience Australia's marine geological framework studies.
Patrick De Deckker
Patrick De Deckker is a geologist with a PhD [awarded in 1981] from the Zoology Department at the University of Adelaide and a DSc [awarded in 2002] from the Department of Geology and Geophysics from the same University.
He has more than 10 years of research experience in marine geoscience in Australian waters and was cruise leader on the RV Franklin on four occasions. He founded the Australian Marine Quaternary Program in the Geology Department at the Australian National University and has obtained close to two million dollars of research funds during the past six years as well as received the equivalent of over one million dollars in marine research vessel time.
Patrick is now Professor and Head of the Department of Geology at ANU. He has published over 125 scientific publications, and edited or co-edited six scientific volumes. He has 25 years experience in lacustrine environments spanning numerous aspects of geochemistry, micropalaeontology, sedimentology and palaeoclimate studies. A separate document detailing the scientific achievement of the ANU Marine Program can be made available.
Patrick's work aims at reconstructing past climatic changes both in the oceans and on land, in order to better comprehend/predict future climatic changes. He thrives on doing multidisciplinary work and believes that international as well as national collaboration is primordial for doing top science.
Alix King
Alix King is a Marine Geoscientist in the Petroleum & Marine Division of Geoscience Australia in Canberra. She is a recent graduate from the Australian National University (Bachelor Science/Bachelor Arts) and the University of Tasmania (Bachelor Antarctic Studies with Honours) and is currently completing a PhD.
She has developed a strong research background in the use of microfossil records as climatic and environmental indicators in sub-Antarctic to tropical environments. She has published three papers in international refereed journals and presented results from her work at several national and international conferences.
She has previously participated in a geoscience expedition to the Antarctic coastline, where she was involved in sediment coring work.
James J. Daniell
James Daniell is a Marine Geophysicist in the Petroleum & Marine Division of Geoscience Australia in Canberra. He is a graduate of Macquarie University and has completed a Bachleor of Science in palaeobiology and an Masters of Science in geology.
His expertise is in sedimentology, and processing and interpretation of multibeam sonar, and remote sensing imagery. Currently, James works within the Seabed Mapping and Characterisation Project as the project's Geophysicist. He has worked for Geoscience Australia for two years and has one publication (in press).
James' work has led him to travel and research in Pakistan, China, the Great Barrier Reef, Bass Strait and New Zealand.
Marg O'Toole
Marg O'Toole, a Registered Nurse and mother of two young children, lives at Port Campbell in south-west Victoria.
She nurses part-time, specialising in paediatric care, but her main interest and passion is diving and marine natural history.
She has dived extensively in eastern Australia and the south Pacific, and studied aquatic science at Deakin University.
National Park interpreting, intertidal projects and marine park campaigning, and writing a book on diving at Wilsons Promontory, have kept Marg busy.
Dr. John Magee
John Magee, of ANU, has 30 years experience in reconstructing Australian quaternary palaeoenvironments and palaeoclimates using the techniques of stratigraphy, sedimentology, geomorphology, pedology, geochronology and geoarchaeology. This work has been concentrated in the arid core of the continent and in the semi-arid zones on both the tropical and southern margins of the desert, and has dealt particularly with the past 130,000 years.
His MSc research was carried out in the Willandra lakes of the Murray Basin and his PhD research on the palaeohydrology of Lake Eyre established Lake Eyre as one of Australia's premier quaternary sites and demonstrated that Lake Eyre is one of the few continental sites in the world that provides a high-quality datable sequence comparable with the marine record. Related work in collaboration with Prof. G Miller, University of Colorado, utilising amino acid racemisation in fossil eggshells of emu and the extinct giant bird Genyornis, has led to the first quantitative palaeotemperature record from low altitude Australia and the first direct date for extinction of an element of the Australian megafauna.
The AUSCAN - 2003 cruise will allow an opportunity for John to apply his sedimentological and stratigraphical skills to onboard core logging and sediment analyses as well as assisting in the wider research aim of correlating major continental records of climate change with records from the adjacent marine environment.
The Marion Dufresne
Discover more about our amazing oceans