Gardline Hydro Participates in Two Long Term Contracts under the UK CHP
Immediately following OI2004, Gardline Hydro has begun a two-year Civil Hydrography Programme (CHP) to survey the Western Approaches to the English Channel on behalf of its client, the government agency responsible for safety of navigation and CHP sponsor, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA).
The purpose of the 3rd Party Contract is to update Admiralty Charts and other publications to ensure the safe navigation of vessels. The contract, consisting of approximately 8800km2 of seabed mapping is Gardline’s ninth successive annual CHP and the first to employ multi-beam bathymetric techniques to achieve IHO S-44 Category 1 standard.
Gardline’s hydrographic survey ship, ‘MV Ocean Seeker’ will be employed for the project and mobilised with a suite of survey equipment including hull mounted KS EM1002 95kHz and a high resolution multi-beam echo-sounder. A combination of multi-beam echo-sounder data and side-scan sonar will be used to meet the object detection criteria.
The survey will be carried out during 2004 and 2005, operating seasonally from April – October. Survey activities will include:
- Bathymetric survey
- Identification of hazards for shipping
- Seabed object detection
- Composition of the seabed ground-truthed by modified day grab
- Obstructions wire swept using a single vessel drift method where required
Gardline will submit survey results to the United Kingdom Hydrographic Office (UKHO) who will perform validation checks prior to acceptance for updating the Admiralty Chart databases.
