Multibeam system for Ifremer

The Simrad ME70 will be supplied as part a refit of Ifremer’s L’Europe research vessel, prior to its March 2014 sea trials.

“The ME70 has added another dimension to our biological surveys on board the RV Thalassa as it addresses some of the physical shortcomings of quantitative single beam echosounders such as low resolution and sampling volume,” said Laurent Berger, fishery acoustician, Ifremer.

He added that the reason for the order is that the company wants to standardise its echosounder systems across its research vessels.

Simrad’s ME70 has a unique built in calibration functionality allowing the user to obtain backscatter values from ecosystem components such as plankton, fish or bottom habitat.

The ME70 is designed to allow the user to measure weak targets close to strong ones, which is essential when the goal is to map the entire marine ecosystem. It is thus a unique multibeam system allowing measurements of targets close to the bottom in the entire swath and therefore reducing the acoustic dead zone close to the bottom.

Ifremer is assigned the task of contributing to the knowledge of oceans and their resources, the monitoring of marine and coastal zones, and the sustainable development of maritime activities.