Auckland-based marine company Electronic Navigation (ENL) has made its first export into China after signing a big deal with a Chinese state engineering company to make innovative use of its seafloor profiling equipment.
The company's Wassp Multibeam son
Auckland-based marine company Electronic Navigation (ENL) has made its first export into China after signing a big deal with a Chinese state engineering company to make innovative use of its seafloor profiling equipment.
The company's Wassp Multibeam sonar is being used on a new 120m-long dredge working the Yangtze River delta in the Shanghai Harbour.
ENL managing director Neil Anderson told NZPA it was the first time the Wassp multibeam had been fitted to this type of dredge, and that the technology was being used to track the sea floor in dirty silt-laden water on the Yangtze delta.
Mr Anderson said the equipment allowed operators without specialist hydrographic survey experience to monitor a 120-degree wide swath from port to starboard and accurately see the seafloor and water column, and important factors such as whether the dredge was approaching "hard ground" or mud.
The mapping by 112 beams -- stabilised with the help of a motion sensor could also record the seabed profile after it had been dredged.
Mr Anderson said the market for surveying, dredging and marine construction in China held great potential.
Normal applications for the company's technology including fishers who scanned both the seafloor under their vessels, and the target fish. Fishers trawling for scampi or crabs wanted a mud bottom, and they wanted to avoid potential snags such as ship wrecks. French users of the technology were getting a 20 to 30 percent lift in catch rates.
The scanners could also be used for research -- an Alaskan fisher was tracking king crabs tagged to reflect the sonar to identify their migration routes, and a South African researcher was using it in a small inflatable to map river mouths.
Divers in coastguards, and marine police were using the technology to find corpses, stolen goods, dumped cars and other lost objects, while sports fishers were profiling reefs where they wanted to take clients.
