Gardline wind farm survey – by David Goodfellow
Great Yarmouth UK based Gardline Hydro has been awarded a contract by RWE npower renewables for geophysical surveys of the Atlantic Array Offshore Wind Farm site in the Bristol Channel.
Two vessels, Tridens 1 and Vigilant, are currently operating over depths from 40m to 60m and will also survey the export cable route in waters deeper than 15m. A shallow draught coastal vessel provided by Titan Environmental Survey will complete surveys of the route up to the shore.
Techniques being used include simultaneous multibeam bathymetry and dual-frequency sidescan sonar studies together with magnetometer and sub-bottom profiler operations capable of identifying sediment thickness and basement depths across survey areas. The project is scheduled for completion by mid-June.
Meanwhile, Gardline Hydro’s associate company, Gardline Geosciences, has awarded a contract to A&P Falmouth for conversion of the Norwegian built Fohn, an 87m LOA deep seismic vessel, into a geotechnical survey craft for offshore renewables applications. It will be renamed Ocean Discovery.
