Seamor Marine delivers Chinook ROV in Canada

Seamor Marine has delivered a Chinook remotely operated vehicle (ROV) to the department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada in Manitoba for inspection of the High Arctic area.

The High Arctic area encompasses the northern regions of Canada, from Arctic Basin, Baffin Bay and the Pikialasorsuaq, to western Greenland. With estimates that sea ice is decreasing at a rate of 11% per decade in the Arctic due to climate change, it is anticipated that the Arctic could lose its summer ice by 2050 and be largely ice-free by 2070.  

The Chinook ROV will be deployed for ‘The Last Ice Project’, which is a collaboration between the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Parks Canada Agency and Indigenous, Northern and International partners, including the World Wildlife Fund-Canada and Pristine Seas – National Geographic Society.

The vehicle, which can dive to 2,000ft below the surface, will be used to conduct ecosystem identification and benthic surveys (underwater mapping of the sea floor) and inspection of first-year ice and multi-year ice.  

The ROV is equipped with a handheld pendant controller and a fibre optic tether multiplexer upgrade. These will help control a wide range of on-board instrumentation such as USBL underwater positioning system with GPS integration, allowing the ROV to be tracked in real-world coordinates in real time; and an integrated Tritech Micron Echosounder which permits the ROV to measure its height above the sea floor and maintain its height with the company’s auto-altitude system.

The vehicle also features a dual function gripper, a sensor skid, which provides opportunities to integrate additional sensors to the system; double-dot tilting colour-laser scaling system, and a HD camera with uncompressed digital output.