Vertical Water Column Survey of Komatsu-shima in Japan Using Autonomous Underwater Vehicle SOTAB-I

摘要

Oil spills and blowouts of oil and gas from the seabed disasters causetremendous damage to the environment as well as to the marine andhuman life. To prevent oil spills from spreading and causing furtherdamage in time and space, early detection and monitoring systemsshould be deployed around the area where an oil spill first occurred.This should be done in order to provide a rapid inspection of the areaby detecting chemical substances and collecting oceanographic dataneeded for enhancing the accuracy of oil drifting simulation. Accuratesimulation results enable us to predict precisely where the spilled oilwill wash ashore and therefore, make a quick response to the disasterby adequately deploying oil recovery machines that prevent oil fromspreading further. A spilled oil tracking autonomous buoy calledSOTAB-I was developed to perform in-situ measurement of chemicalsubstances by an underwater mass spectrometry and to detect spilled oilautonomously. In addition, it can transmit oceanographic data in realtime. Sea experiments were conducted using SOTAB-I in shallowwater near Komatsu-shima coast in Tokushima in Japan in order tocheck surveying abilities of SOTAB-I as well as some aspects of itsguidance and control. Experiments results showed that SOTAB-I wasable to perform the water column profile of underwater currents as wellas salinity, temperature and density distribution. This paper describesthe operational modes of SOTAB-I following its outline andcharacteristics. Measured results in field experiments conducted inKomatsu-shima are presented.