SeeByte and Bluefin Collaborate on
Pipeline Inspection Solution
SeeByte (Edinburgh, Scotland) and Bluefin Robotics (Quincy, Massachusetts) announced last Thursday their collaboration to provide enhanced software solutions for deepwater export pipeline inspections.

The collaboration is aimed at equipping Bluefin’s 21-inch AUV platforms with SeeTrack AutoTracker. This will combine Bluefin’s vehicle stability and navigation capabilities with SeeTrack AutoTracker’s ability to accurately guide the AUV at a predefined offset from the pipeline.  

Caption: The Bluefin-21 AUV.

Source: Bluefin press release

Lubchenco to Leave NOAA in February
NOAA Administrator Dr. Jane Lubchenco (pictured) announced earlier in December that she is stepping down at the end of February, The Washington Post reported. 

In an e-mail to her staff, she wrote: "I have decided to return to my family and academia ... on the West Coast." Lubchenco was formerly a professor at Oregon State University. 

She praised her staff in the e-mail and listed her team's top achievements, including strengthening the U.S. environmental satellite infrastructure, delivering life-saving weather forecasts and warnings, helping create the National Ocean Policy and dealing with the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe in the gulf. 

NOAA said they have no personnel announcements at the moment for Lubchenco's successor.

Source: The Washington Post

BP Finds No Hydrocarbons Leaking From
Macondo Well After ROV Survey
BP plc (London, England) confirmed last Tuesday the integrity of the Macondo well and its associated relief wells following a subsea survey to identify potential sources of a surface sheen near the Deepwater Horizon accident site in the Gulf of Mexico.

The well was permanently sealed in September 2010, and this is the fourth time since then that it has been visually inspected by ROV at the seafloor and confirmed not to be leaking.

BP and Transocean (Geneva, Switzerland), owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig, deployed ROVs earlier in December under a plan approved by the U.S. Coast Guard, which said the sheen is not recoverable and poses no risk to the shoreline.

ROVs inspected the rig, portions of the riser and BP’s cofferdam, an 86-ton steel container. Although no evidence of hydrocarbons leaking was observed, a white, cloudy substance appeared to be emanating from several places on the overturned rig, and samples of the substance were collected. BP will review the results of the investigation with the Coast Guard.

The survey was conducted with Coast Guard oversight and the presence of representatives from the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, and the states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida.

BP will continue to work with the Coast Guard and Transocean on any further steps, as needed, to address the results of the survey.

Caption: Deepwater Horizon as seen from space by NASA's Terra satellite in May 2010. (Photo Credit: NASA)

Source: BP press release

Aqua Survey and NASA Test Watercraft
For Future Use in Space
Aqua Survey Inc. (Flemington, New Jersey) is working with NASA to perform a bathymetric survey of a volcanic crater lake in the Chilean Andes Mountains as part of a three-week NASA expedition.   
 
One of the mission's primary goals was to test a new prototype autonomous watercraft called the Planetary Lake Lander. The lake needed to be surveyed for navigational obstacles before the lander prototype could be deployed.
 
The hope is that one day a craft like the prototype can be remotely delivered and parachuted to the surface of a large nonwater lake on Titan, Saturn's biggest moon. Once there, it would be able to float across and measure what the lake is made of, as well as recording the winds, waves and changing weather patterns.
 
Titan is thought to have conditions similar to those of Earth when life first evolved. Some scientists view it as a potential host for extraterrestrial microbial life.

Caption: NASA laboratory tents in the Chilean Andes.

Source: Aqua Survey press release

Freak Photographic Coincidence of
Hydrographic Survey in Google Earth
Surveyors from Select Energy Services of Texas were surprised earlier in December to see one of their ROV's hydrographic activities photographed and incorporated into Google Earth. The team was preparing to do a hydrographic survey of a water holding pond for a natural gas fracturing operation using the Oceanscience (Oceanside, California) Z-Boat 1800. The Z-Boat incorporates a single-beam echosounder, GPS and telemetry system. 

Prior to leaving for the survey site, the Select Energy Services process calls for the Google Earth map of the pit to be uploaded to the acquisition software to provide a background image for the survey plan and to offer clients a familiar perspective when viewing the final survey product. The Google Earth image showed a small yellow dot in the middle of the frac pit that seemed to have a wake behind it. When the image was zoomed in, the Z-Boat was clear in the satellite picture.

The photograph in Google Earth was taken exactly when the boat was at the pit during the previous time it was surveyed a few months earlier. Using a three-year average age for Google Earth imagery, the odds of this coincidence are about 1 in 25,000.

Caption: The Z-Boat in a Google Earth image.

Source: Oceanscience press release

Falcon ROV Films Deep-Sea Species for Oceana
Conservation organization Oceana has explored undersea mountains in the Atlantic and Mediterranean using the Saab Seaeye Ltd. (Fareham, England) Falcon DR ROV. The 1,000-meter-rated ROV was used to record many species and habitats, including carnivorous sponges, lobsters and sharks.

Oceana bills itself as "a pioneering NGO [nongovernmental organization] in the use of ROVs."
 
The project began 240 kilometers off the Portuguese coast in the Gorringe Bank marine mountain range. Here, scientists filmed algae forests and hundreds of species, and noted the ecological value that seamounts offer to many species, including whales, dolphins and swordfish.

They have found species whose existence on the Gorringe Bank was previously unknown. When they later explored the Chella Bank, offshore Almería, Spain, they found protected species such as a carnivorous sponge and an angular rough shark at risk from damage to their seamount habitat by recreational and commercial fishing.

Hundreds of hours of ROV filming has enabled Oceana to gather essential scientific data. Being able to use transects that move the ROV along a path, rather than directly up and down, has given more comprehensive views.

The high-definition cameras were manufactured and supplied by Marine Vision (Málaga, Spain), which also supplied the ROVs.

The Falcon DR came over from the Gulf of Mexico, where Oceana had used it to assess the long-term impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on marine ecology.

Caption: Norway lobster (Nephrops norvegicus) on a Portuguese seamount.

Source: Saab Seaeye press release

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