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Lizard Island Research Station Profile
Contents
Mission
We aim to be a world-leading supplier of on-reef facilities for coral reef research and education. To achieve this, we:
- Value our customers and their work, and rate service to them as the highest priority
- Maintain the local ecosystem in excellent condition by careful management of the Station's marine and land-based activities, and by close liaison with reef management authorities
- Continually improve and upgrade facilities.
Overview
The Lizard Island Research Station is a facility of the Australian
Museum on the Great Barrier Reef, 270 km north of Cairns. It enables
cost-effective research and education about coral reefs by providing
accommodation, boats, diving gear, laboratories and a seawater aquarium
system to researchers and student groups. From research conducted at
Lizard Island, about 1,000 scientific publications have been produced
by Australian and international researchers since the Station's inception
in 1973. The information is used by reef managers to conserve coral
reefs, which are proving to be an increasingly vulnerable resource.
Staff
Lyle Vail MSc, PhD and Anne Hoggett BSc(Hons), PhD have been joint directors of the Research Station since August 1990. They are married to each other and each has a research background in the systematics and ecology of marine invertebrates. Their roles are now mainly in management.
Two couples each work for six months each year to maintain the Station and assist with all aspects of island life. Lance and Marianne Pearce have been with the Station since 1988, and Bob and Tania Lamb started as volunteers in 1995 and as employees in 1998. Lance is a welder by trade and Bob is an electrician; Marianne and Tania both have backgrounds in office work. All four are extremely versatile in their skills and abilities.
Parent institution
The Australian Museum is the oldest natural history museum in in Australia and is widely acknowledged as among the best in the world in terms of scientific research, exhibitions, and educational programs. It is a NSW government institution located in a heritage-listed building in central Sydney. The Lizard Island Research Station is the Museum's only field station.
User groups
The Lizard Island Research Station's facilities are available to:
- Coral reef researchers, including postgraduate students, from all
over the world. About 100 different research projects are conducted
each year, involving about 300 research personnel of which about 30%
are from countries other than Australia
- School and university student groups conducting educational field work, led by instructors provided by their own institutions. About 12 educational groups, each of about 20 people, visit each year. At least 80% of educational groups come from overseas.
- Volunteers, commercial users and special interest groups can be accommodated when space permits.
Facilities
The following facilities are provided at the Research Station:
- Shared accommodation for up to 37 people in four simple, yet comfortable, self-contained houses in which visitors cook and clean up after themselves.
- A fleet of boats to enable access to the reefs of the Lizard Island Group and to more distant reefs, from the mainland coast to the outer barrier reefs.
- Diving equipment, including scuba tanks and air filling facilities.
- State-of-the-art seawater aquarium system enabling controlled experiments with living reef organisms.
- Laboratories with basic equipment that enable research samples to be processed to a stage suitable for transporting them to mainland or overseas laboratories for further analysis.
- Phone, fax and broadband internet access.
Funding
The Research Station's operating expenses (including staff salaries) are largely covered by fees charged to visiting researchers and educational groups. The Australian Museum Trust also contributes.
Funding for all capital expenditure is raised externally. The Lizard
Island Reef Research Foundation was established in 1978 for this purpose.
It provides about $100,000 each year as a regular capital contribution and to fund the Lizard Island Doctoral Fellowships program. As well, the Foundation is currently raising funds for a major upgrade that is occurring between 2005 and 2010. Mr Kenneth Coles AM has
been chairman of the Foundation since 1994. Recently, capital funding
has also been provided by the US-based Coral Reef and Marine Science
Foundation.
Future directions
Coral reefs are under threat worldwide: recent estimates are that 10% of reefs are already damaged beyond repair and another 70% are threatened. Australia is one of the few developed countries to have significant coral reef areas under its control, and the Great Barrier Reef is among the best managed in the world. Over the last three decades, Australia's capability has become pre-eminent in tropical marine science and coral reef management. This places Australia in a unique position to provide on-reef facilities for coral reef research and education to a world-wide customer base.
Lizard Island Research Station is already benefiting from this concentration
of world-wide attention on Australian coral reefs: at least 30% of visiting
researchers and 80% of visiting educational groups come from overseas.
The Research Station will continue to build on this export market. We
do this by continually improving facilities that are relevant to the
needs of users and by emphasising customer service, ease of access to
the coral reef environment within the limits of safety and legislative
requirements, and maintenance of equipment. This is our critical advantage,
resulting in many well-travelled coral reef researchers declaring Lizard
Island Research Station to be the best such facility anywhere in the
world.
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