‘BAP Carrasco’, a 97-metre hydrographic and oceanographic research vessel built by Construcciones Navales P Friere at its Vigo yard in Spain, has been delivered to the Peruvian Navy in readiness for commitment to Polar operations under Antarctic Treaty arrangements in addition to surveys of national Peruvian waters.
The new vessel features an extensive array of integrated subsea systems, including two Kongsberg Hugin AUVs for enhanced medium water operations in depths down to 3,000m. Other equipment provided by the Norwegian company includes an EM 122 deepwater multibeam sounder together wth EA 600 single beam units, an SBP 120 sub-bottom profiler, and a series of Simrad scientific single beam multi-frequency echo sounders. As part of a wide-ranging contract Kongsberg will additionally supervise installation of acoustic transducers for ice water operations while also installing an advanced position, heading and motion reference system and an MDM500 marine data management assembly with real-time and post-processing modules.
By David Goodfellow
