Bathymetric Surveys Underway in Plymouth Sound and Wembury Bay

July 25, 2014

The first sonar manufacturer recently arrived in Plymouth to start conducting bathymetric and backscatter surveys in Plymouth Sound and Wembury Bay as part of the Shallow Survey 2015 Common Dataset (CDS) collection.

The aim of the CDS is to provide the international hydrographic community with a range of datasets, collected using the latest shallow water survey techniques, so that comparisons can be made and the merits of the different approaches judged. To this end, areas in Plymouth Sound and Wembury Bay have been chosen which offer a good variety of depth, bottom type and subsea structures. In addition, a target detection test has been devised to ensure that fair comparisons can be made between the object detection capabilities of the systems.

The six manufacturers taking part in the CDS are WASSP, EdgeTech, Teledyne RESON, Kongsberg Maritime, Kongsberg GeoAcoustics and R2Sonic. Spread throughout July and August, each manufacturer has a five day slot on either a Royal Navy vessel or Plymouth University’s Falcon Spirit.

The CDS also includes remote sensing activity which includes techniques such as satellite-derived bathymetry and airborne acquisition methods such as LiDAR.

Shallow Survey 2015 is the 7th international conference on high-resolution surveys in shallow water, and will be the second time it has been hosted by the United Kingdom Hydrographic Office (UKHO) and Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) in the United Kingdom.

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Press Release, July 25, 2014