USA: CSA Expands Underwater Mapping Capacity

CSA International, Inc. (CSA) has taken delivery of Shark Marine Technologies, Inc.’s Navigator, a self-contained, highly portable, diver-directed mapping system with high accuracy positioning.

Accuracy and precision is critical in creating quality data and mapping products, and CSA wanted a compact, user-friendly system that could be used independently of any vessel-mounted antennas, transceivers, or external hardware to quickly and precisely map a wide range of underwater features. This system uses a hard wired floating GPS, the internal Doppler Velocity Log, or both. It contains an internal 128GB hard drive, built-in navigation software, and a highly visible LCD screen showing the diver tracks, targets, and notes made by the diver.

Up until now, the Navigator has primarily been used by the military for mine counter-measures and search and recovery operations, but it has multiple applications, including environmental, salvage, and wreck removal. CSA plans to use the Navigator for a wide range of applications, including habitat mapping and delineation, natural resource damage assessments associated with vessel grounding and anchoring incidents, fish habitat utilization surveys, pipeline and cable corridor clearance surveys, locating underwater survey markers and pins for in situ environmental data collection, and diver-directed hydrographic and bathymetric surveys. The digital data, which can be linked spatially with real-time video, generate high quality, GIS-compatible, and computer-aided drafting products.

As a multi-disciplinary international marine environmental consulting firm that provides services for the oil and gas industry, engineering/surveying firms, the marine salvage industry, utility companies, law firms, land development companies, and local, State, Federal, and international government agencies, CSA needed a system that could be rapidly deployed anywhere in the world with minimal support equipment.

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Subsea World News Staff , March 01, 2012;  Image: CSA