Fugro Australasian Hydrographic Symposium Report

The Fugro Australasian Hydrographic Symposium 2015 & Trade Exhibition was held in early November 2015 in Cairns, Australia. The Symposium had 117 attendees, mostly from Australia, with a small contingent of welcome oversees visitors as well as 9 exhibitors. The Symposium was ably chaired by CAPT John Maschke, RANR with generous support from sponsors such as Fugro, Kongsberg, Precision Hydrographic Services, QPS, IXSurvey, Hydro and Cadastral Survey, Acoustic Imaging, SBG Systems and a very small team of volunteers.

The presentations were of a high standard covering many aspects of hydrography. Some of the key discussion areas were the use of autonomous vessels, Lidar, data processing and future vessels capable of undertaking multiple roles for hydrography and oceanography data collection. A standout presentation was Fugro’s work in the search for MH370. Apart from the difficulty of finding the wreckage in a very large area of the Indian Ocean, the operating conditions are extreme – 6 days to sail (rock and roll) out to the search site on a 42 day rotation. In one particular weather event, a 17m wave was recorded. It was reiterated several times that the heroes of the search effort are the men and women on the ship working in difficult physical conditions. The picture shows a comparison of the length of the search area to New Zealand and the swath paper plot stretched across the width of the conference room (one third shown in the picture).
A copy of the presentations will be available soon from the AHS website.

During the Symposium, the AHS held their AGM with several changes to key personnel within the various regional executive teams.

The AHS was also saddened with the passing of one of its foundation members and stalwarts CMDR Edward Ronald Whitmore, RAN (Rtd) on 11 November 2015.