Two complete Oceanscience Underway SV systems including the Valeport Rapid SV profiler were recently supplied by Swathe Services (Australia) to IXSurvey Australia ahead of a challenging hydrographic survey project in the Fiordland National Park, New Zealand.
Rapidly changing sound velocity caused by fresh water inflow from the numerous waterfalls and rivers, combined with a small timeframe allowed for completion of the project resulting from frequent extreme weather conditions meant that the job was an ideal application for the underway profiling system.
Two multibeam-equipped survey vessels were each mobilized with Underway SV systems. The two-month project benefitted from a grand total of 417 sound velocity casts, each collected with no associated survey acquisition down-time. The deepest of these sound velocity profiles reached 400 meters, with even this cast taking only a few minutes at the survey speed of 6kts.
Based on the estimated down-time of collecting sound velocity profiles with conventional techniques, over a hundred hours of survey data acquisition was saved and the project objective was achieved remarkably well with survey data of a high standard being collected.
Press Release, June 20, 2014