Everyday thousands of vital scientific temperature measurements are recorded from the seas all around New Zealand
The data is made freely and publicly available to help us all better understand our changing world.
Changing world
Sea temperatures around Aotearoa New Zealand are changing. This directly impacts our seafood, wildlife, weather and people.
What are these changes and where are they occurring fastest? We can only answer these questions with accurate measurements from all around New Zealand, spanning past, present, and future.
Monitoring
Sea surface temperatures can be remotely monitored by satellites. However, these measurements do not reflect the temperatures in the underlying water column. You don’t check the bathwater temperature by just touching the surface.
Measuring subsurface water temperature involves lowering a sensor down through the water column.
The world leading Metservice Moana Project (funded by MBIE 2019-2024) established a network of sensors on vessels all around New Zealand. This network is still operational today, and managed by AMOS
About AMOS
Established at the beginning of 2025, AMOS is a registered charitable trust that coordinates and manages the world-leading network of Moana temperature sensors
Our purpose is to maintain and grow the Mona sensor network around Aotearoa, ensure the data collected is accurate, and make the data freely and publicly available for the public good.
AMOS funding
AMOS is supported by the Auckland University Endevour Fund.
This funding has enabled us to maintain instrumentation on 100 vessels operating around New Zealand.
We will be working with vessel operators around New Zealand to ensure we have sensors evenly reporting from all around our seas.
Our aim is to grow this network of sensors. If you would like to participate, we would love to hear from you.
By contributing to the cost of the sensor, you will ensure data from your fishing ground becomes available to scientists so that it is included in scientific research such as marine heatwaves, weather forecasting and climate change.
Data
The Moana sensor network has recorded millions of data points so far, from the Three Kings Islands in the north, to the Auckland Islands in the south, and from the Chatham’s in the East to the rugged West coast.
These measurements provide a comprehensive insight into how sea temperature is changing below the surface around New Zealand.
The data is mostly open access and made publicly available to scientists around the world so they can contribute to our global understanding of our changing seas.
Technology
To achieve a fully automatic, accurate and robust sensor system was developed by ZebraTech Ltd in Nelson, New Zealand.
The sensor (Moana TD) can be easily attached to a wide range of commercial fishing gear, including trawls, long lines, pots, dredges and nets.
A solar powered Deck Unit wirelessly receives the data from the sensor and uploads it to a Metservice operated cloud database, where it passes through a highly developed quality analysis process and then safely stored.
The Moana sensor system is now also widely used around the world for similar projects.
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