Battling the elements: 30 years of coastal fieldwork, in pictures
Prof. Brander (right) started his coastal fieldwork career in Canada, where he’d often need to dive in freezing cold water for six hours a day, every day, for weeks on end. Eating donuts and going for joy rides helped Prof. Brander and his colleague Phil Osborne keep happy in between cold dives. Photo: Rob Brander.
Sometimes you just need to call in the big guns. During a 1992 field trip in Canada, a storm tangled equipment and cables so far underwater that a log skidder – a tractor usually used for hauling logs out of forests – was hired to help pull the equipment out. Photo: Rob Brander.
The researchers watched the giant game of tug-a-war from behind the sand dune. The divers, who knew how deep the cables were buried, were doubtful the skidder could salvage the equipment. The skidder gave it its best shot, tipping onto its rear wheels at one point. Eventually the cable tension was too high, and the cables snapped one after the other. Photo: Rob Brander.
Professor Andy Short, co-editor of the story collection, is gearing up to carry out a ‘rip float’: an experiment that tracks the speed and trajectory of a rip current by letting the rip carry a trained professional out to sea. Prof. Short and Prof. Brander took turns being the floaters, being taken as far as 300 metres from the beach. They used orange flags to help the pre-booked lifesaving crew to spot them. Photo: Rob Brander.
The remote Nine Mile Beach in Central Queensland is a two-hour 4WD trip away from the nearest town, Yeppoon – which meant the researchers had no choice but to bunker down when a mini-cyclone hit the campsite. The beach is characterised by its rip-tides, sandy dunes, and high-energy wave activity coming from the Great Barrier Reef. Photo: Rob Brander.
Before the storm: The research team's office and home during the Nine Mile Beach field trip. Prof. Brander and colleagues managed to save the main research tent from the mini-cyclone, but two of their colleagues needed to camp under the 4WD after their sleeping tent was blown away. Photo: Rob Brander.
Peek-a-boo: Quick thinking and a sacrificed snack helped the researchers fix a technical problem on the Nine Mile Beach experiment. The researchers wedged a Tiny Teddy biscuit into the flowmeter rotors to stop them from spinning wildly in the wind during low tide. The biscuits dissolved when the water rose again, letting the rotors get back to work underwater. Photo: Ian Turner.
Co-editors of the 'Stories from the Field' collection, Prof. Rob Brander and Prof. Andy Short, have been conducting field experiments together since the early 1990s. Photo: Layla and Ivy Brander.
Swimming away from sharks, defending a tent during mini-cyclone and being threatened with a pet dingo are all in a day’s work for Professor Rob Brander, coastal geomorphologist at UNSW Sydney.
“As a field scientist, you’re completely at the mercy of the conditions,” he says. “You can plan the best experiment, but there’s a lot of luck involved when you’re out on the field – both good and bad.”
Prof. Brander recently co-edited ‘Stories from the Field’, a special issue of the Journal of Coastal Research that looks back on 50 years of research from coastal scientists around the world. Prof. Brander edited the special issue alongside Professor Andy Short, a coastal geomorphologist at the University of Sydney and his former PhD supervisor.
Unlike most scientific journals, this edition isn’t just about the science, but the tales of getting the science. Each story is filled with funny, uncanny or life-threatening moments – and sometimes all three.
“Scientific fieldwork often involves extreme locations and conditions,” says Prof. Brander. “Wild, bizarre and unexpected stuff happens, but at the same time significant scientific advances occur. I wanted to capture that."
Here, Prof. Brander shares some snapshots from his own 30 years on the field.