UK-based Ocean Scientific International Ltd (OSIL) have released a new sediment corer designed to be mounted to the skids of ROVs or AUVs.
The system allows sediment samples to be collected during routine ROV operations and can be chained together to allow multiple core assemblies to be installed as one system.
The assemblies are powered and controlled by the customers own skid control unit and have been pressure tested for use in depths of up to 1200 meters, with deeper units currently in development.
The design is based around the industry standard multiple (multi) corer, and each assembly recovers a 400mm sample containing 300mm sediment and 100mm supernatant water.
Each complete assembly weighs approximately 12kg in air and exerts a downward penetration force of up to circa 15kg. On recovery the core tubes can be recovered and replaced, and can either be sampled directly, or frozen and sampled subsequently.
OSIL’s precision engineering facilities allowed a development prototype to be demonstrated before the final design specification was agreed.