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Data Art

This page showcases data visualisations I created from public ocean datasets. Each piece is more or less abstract, depending on the storytelling objective. The colour, density and motion in each work are typically driven by the data itself.

Two polar maps, Antarctica on the left and the Arctic on the right, showing Argo float tracks: gold for floats active from 2021 to 2026, blue for older floats, with the median winter sea ice edge in green Argo floats in the polar oceans
Two polar maps, Antarctica on the left and the Arctic on the right, showing Argo float tracks: gold for floats active from 2021 to 2026, blue for older floats, with the median winter sea ice edge in green

Argo floats in the polar oceans

Global Ocean Observing System 2026 Status Report card

Created for the Global Ocean Observing System to feature in its 2026 Status Report card, this map showcases Argo monitoring efforts in the polar oceans. It brings together every Argo float track recorded around Antarctica and the Arctic: gold for floats active over the past five years, blue for older records, with the green line marking the median maximum extent of winter sea ice in each region. The visualisations illustrate recent coverage, even beneath the ice edge, and help reveal the coverage gaps that ocean observing systems can prioritise in the years ahead.

Data: Argo Global Profile Index (Coriolis); NOAA/NSIDC Climate Data Record of Passive Microwave Sea Ice Concentration, Version 6. Data visualisation: Fabrice Jaine (IMOS).

Animated map of Argo float tracks around Australia and Antarctica from 2000 to 2026, with Australian-deployed floats in gold and other floats in blue Two decades of Argo float deployments

Two decades of Argo float deployments

20-year IMOS Anniversary

Over the past two decades, thousands of Argo floats have drifted through the oceans around Australia and Antarctica, diving to 2,000 metres or beyond every ten days and rising back to the surface to send home profiles of temperature and salinity essential for accurate climate modelling and weather forecasting. This piece replays a quarter of a century of their journeys. What begins as a few scattered deployments becomes a dense, organised, restless weave covering vast swathes of the ocean, a quiet record of the international coordination effort that lets us take the ocean’s pulse.

Data: IMOS Argo Floats Facility; Argo Global Profile Index (Coriolis); NOAA/NSIDC Climate Data Record of Passive Microwave Sea Ice Concentration, Version 6. Image: Jakob Weis (UTAS). Data visualisation: Fabrice Jaine (IMOS).

Three-dimensional map of one elephant seal's journey from Kerguelen Island to the Antarctic coast and back in 2024, coloured by sea temperature, with its dive depths shown above An elephant seal’s journey across the Southern Ocean

An elephant seal’s journey across the Southern Ocean

2026 Beaker Street Festival Hobartica exhibition

This piece, created for the Hobartica exhibition of the 2026 Beaker Street Festival, follows a single southern elephant seal, tagged by IMOS, on a six-month journey from the sub-Antarctic islands of Kerguelen and Heard to the edge of the Antarctic continent and back. Throughout the journey, the seal’s tag collects vital data about the subsurface properties of the ocean in this remote, data-poor region, such as sea temperature and salinity, and relays them in real time, turning one animal’s search for food into a living ocean observatory.

Data: IMOS Animal Tagging sub-Facility; NOAA/NSIDC Climate Data Record of Passive Microwave Sea Ice Concentration, Version 6. Image: Aaron Stanley (BOM). Data visualisation: Fabrice Jaine (IMOS).

Animated map of seal and sea lion tracks around southern Australia and Antarctica from 2005 to 2025 Two decades of tracking marine mammals as oceanographers

Two decades of tracking marine mammals as oceanographers

20-year IMOS Anniversary & 2026 Beaker Street Festival Hobartica exhibition

Produced for the 20th anniversary of Australia’s Integrated Marine Observing System and exhibited in Hobartica at the 2026 Beaker Street Festival, this piece replays two decades of satellite tracks from five species of seals and sea lions, day by day. Each line traces a single animal’s journey; together they weave a luminous web across the Southern Ocean as the sea ice breathes in and out around Antarctica with the seasons. It’s a portrait of animals that, simply by going about their lives, have become some of our most dedicated oceanographers, sampling waters that ships and instruments rarely reach.

Data: IMOS Animal Tagging sub-Facility; NOAA/NSIDC Climate Data Record of Passive Microwave Sea Ice Concentration, Version 6. Image: Aaron Stanley (BOM). Data visualisation: Fabrice Jaine (IMOS).

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