Partrac will be installing custom made seabed monitoring frames at four locations inside the harbour and at the dredge material disposal site. The frames will be fitted with optical backscatter instruments to continuously monitor suspended sediment concentrations and current profiler instruments to provide current velocity, pressure (tide) and directional wave spectra (including height).

Opportunistic suspended sediment monitoring and sampling close to the dredging site will also be conducted in order to obtain a greater understanding of the extent of the sediment plume resulting from dredging operations.

The inshore frame will additionally be equipped with a specialist instrument, the marine altimeter, which is specifically designed for shallow water and muddy environments to quantify changes of seabed elevation at a location where deposition or erosion occurs. Data from the instrument will identify millimetre scale changes in bed level thus helping to determine whether sediment accretion as a result of dredging operations occurs.