New Wave Media

Vesper Marine designed its Virtual AIS Beacon in 2010 and installed the first solution in 2011. Developed to address the need to make hazards at sea visible when costly physical infrastructure is not appropriate or is impossible to deploy, the VAtoN technology that Vesper Marine has created is based on the international standardized AIS, which all large ships must use and many smaller vessels are now choosing to install due to the safety and collision avoidance benefits it provides.

 

A Virtual Aid to Navigation is created when a signal sent from a transmitter in an accessible location is used to mark a remote point. This mark is displayed as a special feature or hazard on a vessel’s ECDIS, chart plotter or AIS display when within range. The ship’s onboard equipment is then able to alert crews to the presence of and if they are on a collision course with the marked navigational hazard.

 

Vesper Marine was selected to provide this technology to the French company CGG. A geoscience company that provides geological and geophysical survey and analysis to its broad base of customers, primarily from the oil and gas industry, CGG provides a detailed map of the ocean floor. To accomplish this, CGG survey vessels tow an array of cables in the water at a 15m or 50ft depth. The cables contain seismic energy sources, usually a series of airguns that are fired at regular intervals as the vessel moves along predetermined survey lines. Energy reflected from beneath the seafloor is detected by numerous 'hydrophones' contained inside long, neutrally buoyant 'streamers' also towed behind the vessel. A typical towed configuration is between 12 and 20 cables and streamers, 8km or 5mi long with a separation of 100m or 328ft, which equates to 10 square km or 3 square miles of equipment under the surface. In the past, other ships had no way of knowing that this equipment was in the water. Numerous collisions with the unseen streamers resulted in a high loss of both equipment and productivity. By using Vesper Marine’s Virtual AIS Beacons to broadcast positioning data to other ships in the area, CGG plans to eliminate this loss.

 

Vesper Marine’s VAB1250 Virtual AIS Beacon continually broadcasts the positions of the towed equipment via an interface to CGG’s proprietary navigation software. The software provides the updated position of the equipment regularly to the VAB1250 identifying points at the front, middle and tail of the spread of streamers and on the outer cables. These points are then displayed on any AIS-equipped ECDIS, chart plotter and radar within a range of approximately 20nm.

 

“We began discussing this project with Vesper Marine in July 2013,” said Matthieu Champenois, Field Support Engineer – Navigation & Positioning Department, CGG. “Jeff Robbins and his teams quickly grasped our needs and developed a solution that was ideally suited for this project.”

 

CGG currently has two ships outfitted with Virtual AIS Beacons and has made the decision to outfit all 13 vessels in its fleet. The first installation was completed in December, 2013 on the CGG Symphony. Maritime regulations were handled in collaboration with the ship’s management company. The CGG Symphony’s seismic navigation crew conducted the system installation quickly and easily – there was no need for a field technician to perform the installation. In coordination with Vesper Marine, CGG has developed its own software interfaces between the existing navigation and positioning systems and the beacon. The fully automated system shares an existing VHF antenna on the ship with the radio via a Vesper Marine AIS/VHF splitter.

 

“The second system was installed on the CGG Oceanic Challenger in May 2014 before a job in a location where the vessel traffic reached 120 vessel crossings per day,” continued Champenois. “As the broadcasted marks appearing on the displays presented an unusual situation for vessels in the area, their bridge officers contacted the Challenger’s master in order have a clearer view of the situation and to avoid any collision. This was exactly the intended result.”

 

By implementing Vesper Marine technology, CGG has been able to improve the safety of its oceanic geological and geophysical survey efforts, both for its crew and equipment as well as for surrounding shipping. By using Vesper Marine Virtual AIS Beacons, all vessels in the area will be assured that they have a clear understanding of the scope of the operation and will be able to avoid the unseen hazards just below the surface.