Latest Bibby HydroMap vessel demo
The latest addition to Bibby HydroMap’s fleet of survey vessels, Bibby Athena, provided a focal point at Ocean Business for what company officials said was the first UK installation of a newly-installed Sonardyne Mini Ranger 2 USBL acoustic positioning system.
Providing an operating range of 2,000m and an ability to simultaneously track up to ten subsea targets at very fast update rates, the system is claimed to be ideal for nearshore operations on small quiet vessels such as the 27.5m Bibby Athena. Supported by a new HPT 3000 transceiver installed in the vessel hull, the system was used to track the position of Bibby’s d’ROP ROV survey platform during daily demonstrations of its capabilities around Southampton’s Empress Dock and beyond.
Other survey equipment aboard the French-built Bibby Athena includes a dual-head Teledyne Reson 7125 SV2 multibeam system along with industry-standard facilities from C-NAV, Edgetech, iXBlue and TSS.
By David Goodfellow
