News
Sitting on the Bench?
Until now you might have thought that the invitation to contribute appearing under the above headline applied only to elderly retired surveyors sitting on a bench telling stories (read lies) about the good old days. No, absolute not. So let these lines act as a challenge to other readers - forget the age - send your input to this column. Mail it to mail@hydrosoc.dk

High-tech Improvement
The EIVA A/S has taken over (more information under ‘Company News’ elsewhere in this magazine) the well-known Danish company Geological and Marine Instrumentation (GMI). This means that EIVA will not only continue but also extend activities in the field of sales and development of oceanographic instrumentation and system platforms.
The activity covers profiling and stationary systems for automatic recording of oceanographic parameters. The most well-known system distributed to many private industries and institutional bodies worldwide is the towed instrument platform Scanfish II, which has been delivered in over 25 systems. One result: the birth of the Scanfish Club on the Internet, where members can exchange experiences, get news and make cable calculations etc. on www.scanfish.dk.
Today Scanfish are able to undulate in three directions, from surface down to approximately 1,000 metres depth, transmitting data with fibre-optics or superimposed over the power lines and having a tube for continuous water sampling all as part of the tow cable. Instrumentation ranges from simple CTD with Fluoro-meter to complicated OPC with cameras, RDI ADP and radiation sensors (for PAR, UVA, UVB).
A smaller Scanfish II is under development for use on small boats and will undulate to about 100 metre depth. Other instrumentation from EIVA/GMI includes anti-fouling sensors for stationary use, delivered in numbers exceeding 200 units, and fully automatic vertical profiling systems, as well as flow measuring devices with handheld computers for on-site calculation of the flow in small streams.
A further extension of activities will include the whole EIVA programme for environmental monitoring and some new high-tech products as a part of the new EIVA/GMI concept. All development of applications and software will generally be done in co-operation with customers, so as to achieve steady and up-to-date development of all concepts in their every aspect. Further information at www. eiva.dk or www.gmi.dk

Workshops
Coming meetings 2002-2003:

• 11 November 2002
  Monitoring fine-scale seabed change: Repetitive swath surveying, by John Hughes Clarke
  
• 12 December 2002
  Establishment of Wind Farm at Rødsand, Denmark, by Ulrich Ditlev Christiansen
  
• 6 February 2003
  Speedy Mapping of the Norwegian cost. Mapping with Laser bathymetric equipment, by Knut Gjerstad
  
• 20 March 2003
  AGM 2003 for HSD. Workshop subject not finally fixed