New Survey Vessel to Fugro
Fugro America, built by Thoma-Sea Marine Construction in Louisiana, was delivered to Fugro in mid-March. The new vessel is designed to Fugro’s specifications, fitted with the latest geophysical survey equipment and houses some of the most advanced instrumentation in the field. Fugro Americas is optimized for working in the Gulf of Mexico, but is also suited for operations in other geographical areas, being permanently mobilized and available for rapid deployment to locations throughout North and South America as well as the Caribbean.
Fugro said the 59-m-long vessel is capable of carrying out a range of offshore services including high resolution geophysical and light geotechnical surveys in water depths of up to 4,500m. Fugro Americas is built to operate Fugro’s new 4,500m-rated Hugin 1000 Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV), Echo Surveyor VII, which was delivered in December 2014. Specialist equipment on the new survey vessel includes a dynamic positioning system and state-of-the-art survey systems, including a deep water EM302 multibeam echosounder to be used for gas seep surveys.
(As published in the APRIL 2015 edition of Marine Technology Reporter - http://www.marinetechnologynews.com/Magazine)