Wendy Laursen
Contributing Writer-
Subsea Redesign Underway for Floating Offshore Wind
The 66kV high voltage wet mate connector currently undergoing technical qualification by Baker Hughes weighs in at around one ton and has over 40 liters of dielectric oil protecting copper cable up to 1,200 square millimeters in diameter.The connector is designed to sit on the seabed at the end of a dynamic cable coming from floating wind turbines and connect it to a collector hub that ultimately delivers…
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For Those with Saltwater in Their Veins
The Scythian philosopher Anacharsis (6th century B.C.) said: “There are three sorts of people: those who are alive, those who are dead and those who are at sea.”Many of those onboard the Nella Dan when she grounded in December 1987 never went to sea again. Such was their passion for the ship.At that time, most of the crew were single, a wild bunch with saltwater in their veins, likely to be found partying…
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Too Much Information
This week at Marine Technology News...Humanity now has more information than it can analyze alone. We need AI to help us, and with the ability to analyze has come automation and then autonomy.The December issue of Marine Technology Reporter magazine will discuss AI developments including that of Beam which has unveiled an AI-powered AUV designed to be self-driving and independently perform offshore wind inspections…
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What We Need to Know About Telecommunications Cable Protection
This week at Marine Technology News...No subsea telecommunications cable can be guarded all the time.In response to the most recent suspicious severing of telecommunications cables in the Baltic, NATO's Center for Maritime Research and Experimentation in Italy launched software that will combine private and military data along with input from hydrophones, radars, satellites, vessels' Automatic Identification…
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The Power of Scientific Collaboration is Perennial
This week at Marine Technology News...American physicist John Bardeen, the only person to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics twice, once said: “Science is a collaborative effort. The combined results of several people working together is often much more effective than could be that of an individual scientist working alone.”That power proved itself again this week.Scientists from the University of…
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Lending Oceans a Robotic Hand
This week at Marine Technology News...The winners of the 2024 Teledyne Marine Photo Contest were announced this week. The competition is a celebration of the aesthetics of the subsea environment and the technology being deployed in it.Combined with the beauty is the mystery. All the photos relate to the technology being used in the quest to understand what’s down there and how it can be both used and protected.The latest Marine Technology Reporter’s Deep Dive podcast…
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Floating Wind and the Taming of Subsea Spaghetti
Preparing for industrialization, the floating offshore wind industry is tackling its unique mooring and cabling challenges.The idea of keeping floating offshore wind platforms in place using dynamic positioning has been considered. The trouble is: it could take up to 80% of the electricity generated by the turbine to do it.So, as Maersk Supply Service said a few years back: In a field of 100 turbines with 4-5 mooring lines each…
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Subsea Digitalization: Remote Control
The more production infrastructure we push to the seabed, the more data we need to pull back up. With it comes opportunity.Chevron’s landmark 6,500 tons of subsea gas compression infrastructure for Jansz-Io demonstrates the scale of what is being put on the seabed, but there’s a diversity of other infrastructure under development that will operate alongside traditional production systems.This includes subsea fluid storage technology from NOV Subsea Production Systems…
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New Project Marks Tipping Point for Subsea Electrification
OneSubsea™, an SLB joint venture, recently announced a contract award for its all-electric subsea production system, and John Macleod, vice president of technology and strategy at SLB OneSubsea, sees it as the onset of a tipping point.“Large investments have been made across the industry to make this capability a reality, and we now see several projects on the horizon that use all-electric as their…
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Less is More with Gyroscopes
A new generation of fiber optic gyroscopes is taking the accuracy of inertial navigation systems higher and the payload lower.A fiber optic gyroscope (FOG) can now weigh less than three kilograms, less than two kilograms even, and be less than 200mm in diameter.As their host AUVs themselves shrink, FOGs are following suit, and as the AUVs go deeper and perform a wider range of data collection tasks…
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Autonomous Survey Technology: Cutting the Umbilical
There is a flurry of development underway to cut seafloor seismic and geotechnical survey technologies free from on-site control.The deeper you go, the quieter the ocean becomes. It’s something that Kyrre Tjøm is exploiting in his back-to-basics approach to ocean bottom nodes (OBNs). Like his competitors, the CEO and Founder of iDROP, is developing autonomous OBNs that can deploy themselves on to the seabed without ROV support.The current method for laying the nodes…
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The Problem with Reducing Underwater Radiated Noise
If the global commercial fleet reduced its speed by 10%, it would reduce underwater radiated noise by 40%, but nothing’s ever that simple.The main thing holding the shipping industry back from reducing its underwater radiated noise (URN) is not a lack of appropriate technology. It’s argued that many of the technologies being implemented today to reduce fuel consumption also reduce noise. So, the noise reductions could essentially come at no net cost to the shipowner…
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New Wave Data Underpins Ship Structural Integrity
The loss of the Stellar Daisy in 2017 was a tragic reminder of the importance of wave data to ship design and operation. The vessel sank in the South Atlantic Ocean, with 22 of 24 crewmembers lost. The structural failure of the vessel was attributed to several factors including material fatigue and the forces imposed on the hull as a result of the weather conditions.Survey requirements for some vessel types have since been tightened…
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MTR100: Subsea Batteries
Subsea batteries are being configured to meet the demands of science and industry. In both cases, the aim remains to boost the endurance of underwater systems.Not that long ago, SubCtech claimed to be building the world’s largest and only Li-ion battery for subsea oil and gas applications - a 1MWh, 22-ton battery storage skid. The stakes are increasing in this upsizing market, with Kraken Robotics recently announcing an order for subsea batteries worth $16 million…
August 2025
