Canadian AUV Operations Support Contract
The AUVs are being used to help define the northern extent of Canada's extended continental shelf under the provisions of Article 76 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
These autonomous underwater vehicles have a range of over 450 kilometres and a depth rating of 5,000 metres. They are fitted with both a single beam and a multi-beam echo sounder. The single-beam echo sounder provides accurate depth soundings while the multi-beam provides seabed imagery in the vicinity of the spot soundings. This is the AUV's Inertial Navigation Unit to provide scientists with a geographically-referenced data set of the seafloor.
The AUVs were tested in open waters near Vancouver BC this February to validate improvements made after the successful 2010 arctic operations. The vehicles will be deployed to the Canadian Icebreaker CCGS Louis S. St - Laurent for underway testing from St. Johns, NF in April 2011. In the late summer and fall of this year, the Louis S. St-Laurent and the American Icebreaker USCGC Healy will conduct survey operations in the high arctic. Operating from the Louis S. St-Laurent, a team of ISE, DND and NRCan personnel will use the AUVs to conduct seafloor mapping in areas where it is not possible to operate the icebreakers.
This will be ISE's 12th deployment to the Canadian arctic and its fifth season of actual under-ice AUV operations. To date, ISE has conducted over 2,000km of under-ice operations with AUVs reaching depths of 3,160m. In the aggregate, ISE AUVs have completed over 120,000km of operations under water and under ice.
