VIPS 2009 - Renaissance Vinoy Resort & Golf Club - October 26-29, 2009
OFFSHORE - COMMERCIAL DIVING
Assisting and Observing Recovery of Sunken Tugboat in Middle East - Tom Wadsworth, Hydra Botix
Tuesday, October, 27 - 11:15AM - 12:00PM
Based in Dubai, The Momentum Group is a leading global contractor for drilling and related services, with 25 years of experience serving the oil industry. They have developed a well-deserved reputation for rapid, effective, and cost-efficient mobilization of observation ROVs. This job proved to be very good fit for their VideoRays, as it required reliable, powerful, yet very small vehicles. A large oceangoing tugboat had sunk in a perilous location, and it had to be removed and refloated carefully and rapidly. The VideoRay worked alongside commercial divers, salvors, and the client’s representatives – either participating or observing every step of the process. This presentation, by the on-site operator from Hydra Botix, will detail the critical role that a microROV can play in this kind of operation, and how the VideoRay performed tasks that would have been impossible with any other tool. Hydra Botix was a subcontractor to Van Meter Consulting.
VideoRay’s Role in Planning and Monitoring Salvage Operations at Titan
Phil Reed - General Manager, Salvage and Engineering - Titan Salvage, A Crowley Company
Tuesday, October, 27 - 9:00AM - 9:45AM
The engineering work at a successful premier marine salvage company like Titan starts with years of experience and detailed understanding of maritime architecture and salvage techniques, as well as access to specialized equipment and experienced crews. An additional – and critical – aspect is information on the wreck – its condition, its contents, and the conditions of the surrounding seabed.
VideoRay has been a very important tool in gathering this information, and also in monitoring salvage operations. The high degree of portability, mobility underwater, and powerful, effective sonar and survey tools allow Titan to get the information it needs to bid jobs accurately – and profitably – within very short timeframes allotted on many jobs. Getting better information than competitors who use larger ROVs, divers, or guesswork has repeatedly translated to large savings –or helped Titan avoid potentially disastrous losses.
This presentation will discuss several jobs on which Titan used VideoRay – as well as a few from years ago where we wished we could have! Also discussed will be techniques and tactics for underwater observation and surveys in challenging conditions.
Using VideoRays with Sonar to Assist in Indian Coal Mine Stabilization
Steve Van Meter – Van Meter Consulting
Tuesday, October, 27 - 10:00AM - 10:45AM
In June, 2007, VideoRay received a request from Dr. Samir K Pal of the Department of Mining Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India. He was searching for technology to help in fill in abandoned, flooded coal mines before they collapsed, with devastating results. Among the challenges he faced in determining the actual layout and status of the mines was access and subsurface maneuverability inside the mines. Six inch boreholes to the subsurface mines were fairly easy, 12 inch boreholes were doable but expensive, and anything larger was impossible. Obviously, human diving was not an option.
For over a year, VideoRay experts worked on a solution involving the VideoRay Pro 3 and the Tritech SeaSprite sonar. The VideoRay Pro 3 was the only vehicle capable of entering the mines through a 12 inch borehole, and the tiny, but extremely accurate SeaSprite sonar the best tool to measure cavities in the restricted visibility of the murky and polluted water. This presentation will discuss the beginning of the technical discussions, through prototype testing in the US, to the very successful proof of concept in India in September, 2008 by the authors who conducted the field operations in India.
