Successful Sonar Software Workshop

The training included two four-hour sessions aboard the Silver Crescent, a research vessel provided by South Carolina's Department of Natural Resources. As the participants experienced the field exercise aboard the Silver Crescent, the ship simultaneously towed two sidescan sonars. Both systems, a Klein System 3900 (courtesy of L-3 Klein) and a Marine Sonic Sea Scan PC system (courtesy of Marine Sonic), provided a live demonstration for those aboard the vessel.

John Gann, CTI's Vice President of Software Development believes the classroom portion of the workshop was very informative, and the field work aboard the Silver Crescent was a great learning experience for the participants. The attendees set up a survey grid and mosaicked the wreck of the U.S.S. Patapsco and its surrounding area using both the Klein 3900 and Marine Sonic SeaScan sonars. The Patapsco, an iron clad ship sunk by a confederate mine between Forts Sumter and Moultrie, was originally discovered by Clive Cussler in 1981. Its location was provided to CTI by Ralph Wilbanks, a local surveyor and former state marine archaeologist.

The group was guided over the survey lines using CTI's flagship software for real-time sidescan sonar acquisition and mosaicking SonarWiz.MAP. It provided real-time line following displays.

Presentations of the new SonarWiz.MAP contact database/reporting tools, 3D sonar visualisation tools and a slide show by Garry Kozak of L3-Klein were also presented during the three days in Charleston.

Another interesting part of the event involved giving SonarWiz and SonarWeb users the opportunity to guide future development of CTI releases and participants voted for the top 30 enhancements they would like to see added to SonarWiz.MAP in 2008.

CTI is already planning its fourth annual workshop to be held late in 2008 for CTI's SonarWiz and SonarWeb software users.