Equipment pool

The equipment is intended to be used as a coherent package, depending on the problem being addressed, but is divided amongst several sites for logistical and management convenience. For further details, please contact one of the Principal Investigators at the host institutions.

Multibeam sonars

These are two portable systems which together are capable of working in any water depth from the coastline down to ~2000 m (minimum 0.5 m below the transducers and maximum slant range of 3000 m). The systems are SeaBat 8101 and 8160 (240 and 50 kHz) sonars manufactured by Reson. The systems measures water depth in 101 and 126 beams (SB 8101 and 8160 respectively), each 1.5 degrees wide, covering a swath of up to 7.4 times the water depth. The sonars are also capable of creating images of the seabed from acoustic backscatter which are similar to sidescan sonar images. The system is based at Cardiff University. Further details and shots from the July training course and September trials.

Dual-frequency sidescan sonar

We have acquired a dual-frequency system from GeoAcoustics capable of switching from wide-swath reconnaissance work (swath of a few 100 m) to narrow-swath high-resolution imaging (swath of less than 100 m). The image data should be superior to than that from the multibeam sonar. The system is based at Imperial College, London (further details).

High-resolution 'CHIRP' sediment profiler

We have acquired a towed sediment profiler system from GeoAcoustics that uses 'CHIRP' pulse coding and signal processing to create high resultion images of the subsurface (resolution to within 10s of cm) and penetration into the seabed of 10s of m. The system can be operated independently or integrated with the sidescan sonar and is based at Imperial College, London (further details).

Boomer seismic system

We have request a traditional boomer system but, in a novel design, integrated with a multichannel streamer and recording system. The system will produce images of the subsurface with lower resolution than the CHIRP sediment profiler but with greater depth range. Furthermore, the system is designed to allow the extension of multichannel processing methods developed for the petroleum industry down to the fine scale, potentially allowing us to map the velocity structure of the subsurface and create higher quality images than with existing boomer systems. The system will be based at Southampton University (Southampton Oceanography Centre).

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