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www.seadiscovery.com Marine Technology Reporter 51 IXSEA's SHADOWS Honored Robert Girault, COO, La Ciotat, Receiving the First prize in the GEP innovation awards IXSEA won first prize in the French offshore oil and gas industry's innova- tion awards in Paris on October 19. The GEP Prix de l'Innovation 2006 SME/SMI, which recognizes techno- logical advance- ment in the industry as well as finan- cial returns from the innovation, awarded this first prize to IXSEA for its Shadows sonar system. SHADOWS, the first commercially available off-the-shelf Synthetic Aperture Sonar (SAS), is a high-per- formance sonar system with synthetic aperture processing, which offers top rated image quality in real-time with no gap at nadir boosting productivity. "We would like to take this oppor- tunity to thank the French Trade Association for the Oil & Gas Industry (GEP), which supports innovative companies working for the Offshore market," said IXSEA's CEO, Thierry Gaiffe. "Last year we were awarded second prize for our innovative GAPS acoustic position- ing system, and now this year we are extremely honored to win this presti- gious first prize for SHADOWS. This momentous occasion for IXSEA is clear recognition that we provide added value products for the oil and gas industry and we look forward to continuing to serve this market." SHADOWS can be used for all sidescan survey applications includ- ing: cable route; offshore mining; pre-dredging survey; small objects search on the seabed; and shipwreck search and salvage. Subsea Electronic Bottle Release System Marine and environmental equip- ment specialist, OSIL (Ocean Scientific International Ltd.), has been appointed sole distributor of the new Subsea Electronic Bottle Release System (EBRS), a new way to collect calibration samples at depths for con- verting to Suspended Particulate Matter (SPM) (mg/l) and turbidity data. Specially designed to support the survey activities of the environ- mental and oceanographic industries, the Subsea EBRS features three water bottles held in a stainless steel frame with an onboard pressure sensor and optional turbidity sensor. The elec- tronic surface control unit allows the bottles to be fired at a known depth and a simultaneous turbidity reading in Nephelometric Turbidity Units (NTU) can be taken. By collecting the water sample at exactly the same time and in the same volume of water as the NTU reading, the ERBS enables accurate Suspended Particulate Matter (SPM) in mg/l/ NTU calibration charts to be plotted for up to 3 depths on each deploy- ment. The depth sensor has an accu- rancy of +/-1% and it is capable of operating at depths of up to 50 m. ODOM Echo Sounders Sold to USACE International Industries delivered several ODOM Echotrac CV Echo Sounder systems to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) in Norfolk, Va., and to NOAAs' Office of Coast Survey. USACE Norfolk procured a CV2 (dual Frequency) for use on their Survey Vessel ADAMS II. The Echotrac CV is a new hydro- graphic echo sounder design incorpo- rating the technology and features of the Echotrac MKIII, plus the ease and flexibility of operation of a net- worked Windows interface. The transceiver unit is supplied in a com- pact rack mount package. The Echotrac CV offers "Charts" in two formats, a full size color LCD "electronic chart" or a high-resolu- tion thermal paper recorder. Both are supplied in flexible modular enclo- sures complete with swivel mounting hardware. The third option, that of operating the unit and collecting data on a networked PC, is also possible. The color LCD module offers inter- nal data storage (in .XTF format) and playback of the analog return signal digitized to full 16-bit resolution. In addition, the CV offers the possibili- ty of adding a third acoustic channel (X3) to the standard dual frequency people & companies IXSEA CEO Thierry Gaiffe MTR#9 (49-64).qxd 11/13/2006 4:17 PM Page 51
