High Resolution Swath Bathymetric Sea-bed Mapping with the ROV Victor 6000

摘要

Ifremer’s deep-sea ROV Victor 6000 has been equipped with a short range multibeam echosounder in order to accomplish high resolution bathymetric survey for scientific purposes. Specific efforts for the multibeam integration also concern the onboard navigation system as well as the optical high bandwidth data link transmitting data to the surface vessel. The in-line mapping display and data control allowed by the use of an ROV does not reduce the need for data cleaning, correcting and postprocessing. Ifremer’s in-house developed CARAIBES Software. has been used for this step. Three cruises led by international scientific parties have made evident the interest in sub-metric bottom mapping; they are presented in this paper in order to illustrate different kinds of survey strategies. After prototyping and comparison of off-the-shelf multibeam sounders, a permanent survey module is now in project.