Exail Wins €60 Million NATO Contract for Underwater Mine Disposal Vehicles

Exail Robotics Belgium announced it has secured an order worth of nearly €60 million ($67 million) for K-Ster C underwater mine disposal vehicles, K-Ster CT training vehicles and associated equipment to the NATO Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA). These advanced systems are primarily intended for the Belgian and Royal Netherlands navies.The K-Ster units will be assembled at Exail’s production lines in its Belgian facility in Oostende.

Seaturns Advances Full-Scale Wave Energy Trials in France

French wave energy startup Seaturns has started preparations for Phase II of its full-scale sea trials at an operational site off the Gironde estuary in Nouvelle-Aquitaine, moving its technology a step closer to commercial deployment.The trial zone, located within the Port of Bordeaux’s jurisdiction, was selected for its favorable wave conditions and logistical access.Regional authorities and the Grand…

CSA Ocean Sciences Expands Remote Monitoring Capabilities

Global marine environmental consulting firm CSA Ocean Sciences Inc. (CSA) has announced a significant advancement in the firm’s capacity to support offshore environmental projects through real-time subsea video monitoring.CSA’s approach is poised to transform the way seafloor imagery is analyzed, providing technology-driven, cost-effective, and near real-time methods that complement traditional field…

Zunibal Acquires Hydroacoustic Company Echoview

Zunibal, a participated company of Nazca Capital, announced their acquisition of Echoview. The Australian company, based in Hobart (Tasmania), is a global leader in hydroacoustic science and software for the processing, analysis, and visualization of hydroacoustic data. This transaction strengthens Zunibal’s technological and innovation capabilities while expanding its range of solutions.Echoview’s…

Autonomous Navigation – with or without GNSS

Use of uncrewed surface vehicles (USVs) as operational tools in their own right is gaining increasing traction. From harbour patrol to offshore wind operations, USVs and autonomous shipping are seen as an opportunity to reduce cost, risk to humans and our carbon footprints.But they don’t come without challenges. Because they’re unmanned and require control remotely, we are even more reliant on having…

DeepOcean Deploys Its First Autonomous Drone for Inspection of Offshore Structures

Offshore services firm DeepOcean said Monday it had mobilized its first Autonomous Inspection Drone (AID), which it says "can unlock substantial cost savings for operators of offshore wind farms and oil and gas fields. "The subsea drone has been mobilized on board the Edda Fauna subsea Inspection, Maintenance and Repair (IMR) and Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) support vessel."In the coming months…

New Zealand Navy orders four REMUS 300 UUVs

Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) announced that the Royal New Zealand Navy has placed the first international order for four REMUS 300 unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs).Duane Fotheringham, president of the Unmanned Systems business group in HII’s Technical Solutions division, said, “Technology has progressed significantly over the past few years, and the REMUS 300 represents one of the most advanced…

AUV Specialist Argeo Partners Up With Marine Seismic Giant Shearwater GeoServices

Argeo, a provider of robotic and digital solutions for the ocean space, and Shearwater GeoServices, a global provider of geophysical marine seismic acquisition and processing services, have entered a strategic alliance for innovating and pioneering new technology and products across the subsea and marine seismic markets. The alliance said it aimed to drive innovation across all relevant sectors and markets, including the development of new robotic solutions for OBN seismic.

Norway Leads Maritime's Cluster Collaboration

Daniel Garden, CEO of GCE Blue Maritime Cluster, Norway’s largest shipbuilding cluster, got into the maritime game by accident. But the bug bit deep and he is now channeling his energy into the Ålesund-based platform as it forges ahead with a revitalized strategy to accelerate innovation and enable the green shift across the blue ocean spectrum.Garden is a native of Ørsta, nestled among the rugged Sunnmøre Alps at the end of a fjord of the same name. His father was a diplomat, mostly in Africa.

Chinese Seismic Giant Buys 18,000 Seabed Nodes from Sercel

CGG, a France-based provider of seismic data for oil and gas exploration, said Monday its subsidiary Sercel has recorded the first major sale of its recently launched GPR300 seabed nodal solution.Sercel sold the nodes to BGP, a China-based international geophysical services provider. CGG did not share the financial details of the sale.The sale includes 18,000 nodes that will be deployed in Q4 2021 on a large-scale…

R/V David Packard to Sport Sonardyne’s Ranger 2 USBL

Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) selected Sonardyne's deepwater positioning tech for 50-m long R/V David Packard, its new scientific flagship.Named in honor of MBARI’s founder, David Packard, the vessel is being built to undertake a diverse range of missions in Monterey Bay and beyond, supporting the institute’s mission to advance marine science and technology to understand a changing ocean.

Marine Robotics Tech Firm GreenSea Systems Starts Off 2023 with Key New Hires

Marine robotics technology company Greensea Systems on Thursday shared its latest additions to the team, and its implementation of a more agile delivery methodology for its Program Management (PM) team, led by Laura Krahn.Krahn joined Greensea in 2022 with her experience of building an agile team to lead the software development life cycle and advance technology development."My vision is that Greensea’s PM team must function as a team.

Petrobras and Shearwater Join Forces for Seismic Tech R&D

Brazilian state-owned energy company Petrobras and seismic acquisition company Shearwater Geoservices have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for joint development and execution of scientific research and technology innovation within seismic processing and acquisition focused on data quality, value and efficiency.The five-year agreement comes in addition to previously announced cooperations…

Blighter's Radars to Protect Oil Platforms Offshore W. Africa

UK-based designer and manufacturer of electronic-scanning radars and surveillance solutions Blighter Surveillance System has said it has won a contract to provide its C400 series onshore and offshore installation security radars to protect a cluster of offshore oil platforms and an onshore refinery in West Africa.Without sharing details on the client(s), Blighersaid it had been selected to provide…

Opinion: A Call for the USNS Walter Munk to Honor America’s Greatest Oceanographer

In the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, Congress established a commission to rename several military bases and ships that commemorate members of the Confederacy. One of these is the Naval oceanographic ship USNS Maury (T-AGS 66), named after oceanographer Matthew Fontaine Maury, who resigned his commission in the U.S. Navy to join the Confederacy at the outbreak of the American Civil War. The USNS Maury is an asset of the Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command (NMOC)…

Autonomy: Inside the Building of Ocean Infinity’s Armada Fleet

Back in 2017, Ocean Infinity made a novel move; deploying six autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), instead of just one, from a single vessel, vastly increasing the ground that could be covered in a single survey. Now the firm is taking the use of remote, robotic systems a significant step further.Back in 2017, Ocean Infinity made a novel move; deploying six autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), instead of just one…

Inside Sofar Ocean Technologies' Epic Quest to Open Ocean Data

Tim Janssen, CEO, Sofar Ocean Technologies, discusses this real-time ocean intelligence platform’s quest to collect, network and distribute vast amounts of ocean information and insight, essentially creating the ‘nervous system for the oceans.’Tim, to start, please give us a by the numbers look at your company?We are a startup, with 50 people in our San Francisco office, and 50 on the water. We have more than 1…

Wind Patterns Help Predict Low Antarctic Sea Ice

Amid all the changes in Earth’s climate, sea ice in the stormy Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica was, for a long time, an odd exception. The maximum winter sea ice cover remained steady or even increased slightly from the late 1970s through 2015, despite rising global temperatures.That began to change in 2016. Several years of decline led to an all-time record low in 2023, more than five standard deviations below the average from the satellite record.

OET Testing New ROV Cameras for 3D Model Making

On October 22, the Ocean Exploration Trust (OET) launched a 14-day expedition aboard exploration vessel Nautilus to survey some of the most complex deep-sea geology around the Main Hawaiian Islands. The main purpose of the expedition is to test a new widefield camera array mounted on remotely operated vehicles (ROV). Footage from this system will then be used to create near real-time exciting applications for marine research and outreach.

Exail Launches All-in-one INS and DVL System

Subsea inertial navigation systems (INS) manufacturer Exail has launched the Rovins 9 DVL, a new all-in-one system for subsea vehicles that combines the best of inertial navigation and Doppler Velocity Log (DVL) technologies in one tightly integrated system.Described as highly compact for easy vehicle integration, the Rovins 9 DVL all-in-one design combines, in a single housing, Exail advanced Fiber-Optic based INS with a Nortek DVL.