Multibeam Sonar Aiding in Rena Container Salvage

Hydrographic surveyors are using a WASSP multi-beam sonar at the grounding of the 236m-cargo vessel MV Rena on the Astrolabe Reef off the coast of New Zealand, to locate lost containers. Within 48 hours of the WASSP arriving in Tauranga, it had been used to identify twelve targets, seven of which were submerged containers, some at depths of up to 80m. 

 

Single-beam echo sounders and side-scan sonar had been used to support the salvage operation; however MBES systems provide a more economic means of gathering seabed information, particularly in deeper waters. 

With the WASSP 160kHz multi-beam sonar, hydrographic surveyors are able to generate detailed seafloor profiles from 2-200m in depth and can accurately locate seafloor structure, shipwrecks and foreign objects in the water column.

 

The surveyors involved in the salvage effort have been fitting and set up the system quickly into operation.

 

WASSP Multibeam Sonars are designed and manufactured at their headquarters in Auckland, New Zealand and have been exported globally since 2006 and have sold more than 450 units.

 

The WASSP Multibeam technology swath will covers a strip of sea floor 346 metres wide from port to starboard 173 metres either side of the vessel at 100m water depth.

 

WASSP's Windows-based software runs automatically without requiring continuous operator input and all the functions are controlled by a computer mouse. The data can be exported to a third-party chart-plotting system and raw multi-beam sonar data can be saved for further analysis.