The Australian Institute of Marine Science is funded on a triennial basis, which allows planning and forward commitment to major research tasks extending over several years. In 2000-01, we start a new triennium and this document describes our plan and means for achieving our agreed objectives during the next three years.

The Research Plan 2000-2003 is based on five Projects which represent the Institute's Strategic Directions. Within Projects, research teams are formed and dissolved to provide flexible delivery of the Institute's mission in a world of competing demands and changing priorities.

Under our agreement with Government, the planned outcome for the Institute (our mission) is "to provide enhanced scientific knowledge to support the protection and sustainable development of Australia's marine resources". Within this context, choices must be made about priorities. This has been done through extensive consultation with stakeholders about desirability, internal discussions about feasibility, and guidance from national planning documents (particularly Australia's Oceans Policy¹ and Australia's Marine Science and Technology Plan²).

Most Projects range between tactical and strategic basic research. Feedback from our stakeholders identified one of the historical strengths of the Institute as its capacity to undertake large scale, long term studies of complex environmental issues; particularly those involving human impacts in coastal and marine environments. This will remain our core business along with the application of technology to develop sustainable industries. In all endeavours, we aspire to excellence by producing world class science.

Many of the research teams formed for this triennium will be multidisciplinary. Flexible mixing of skills is another traditional strength of the AIMS research program. It is paramount to meeting the challenges posed by complex environment issues such as assessing land-based threats to the quality of ecosystems in the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area or assessing the threat of Greenhouse gas emissions to coral reefs in the next generation. In fact, AIMS is involved in few problem areas (including most applications of biotechnology) that do not require interdisciplinary problem-solving skills.

Our plan for this triennium contains a mixture of old and new activities, representing the renewal encouraged by the triennium planning process. Research continuing from the previous triennium includes:

• resource surveys for regional marine planning
• the health of coral reefs across northern Australia
• water quality of coastal seas
• structure and function of coastal and marine ecosystems
• sustainable aquaculture systems for tropical species
• biodiversity studies for marine conservation and biochemical discovery

In 2000-03, new teams will tackle emergent issues like

• impacts of global warming on coral reefs
• broad-scale mapping of seabed biodiversity
• land-sea interactions germane to coastal development
• novel biomarkers for sublethal stress caused by marine pollution
• improved decision support for natural resource managers

For the 2000-03 triennium, this combination of old and new research directions has been clustered under five Projects:

• Predicting Climate Impacts upon Marine Ecosystems
• Exploring and Conserving Marine Biodiversity
• Sustaining Marine Living Resources
• Measuring Human Impacts in Coastal Marine Ecosystems
• Deriving Benefits from Marine Biotechnology

As before, AIMS scientists will perform this range of research across northern Australia and in other tropical countries. The scope and complexity of the work requires much collaboration with other organisations and individuals. We acknowledge the essential contributions of these partners to our achievements.