Seismic data collection services

Description

IMR sees drone technology as potential important future sensor platforms to improve the understanding of spacial and modern dynamics in the marine eco-system. IMR would like to have a pilot study to examine how much extra information can be obtained with drone technology, compared to short term traditional ship based mission surveys, and whether time with ships can, in some cases, be replaced by drone technology in the future. This contract is for a short term project of four months, where IMR will hire a USV from Saildrone INC. (hereafter called Saildrone), which will be continually tested in the North Sea. IMR will examine the variation in the amount of animal plankton, fish (for example sandeel, herring and coalfish) and oceanographic conditions in space and time. This information will be validated against data collected from traditional ship based methods. IMR would like to examine how much the echo amount of fish varies, in order to evaluate how well standard, short term missions estimate the amount of fish. The contract with Saildrone is for a full service package, where a USV is transported to the operation area, released, controlled and later collected by Saildrone. Saildrone will make calibrated and quality assured data available in real time and high resolution raw data will be available after the assignment has finished. The contract with Saildrone does not include the procurement of hardware and it does not depend on employing personnel to control the drone (pilots). It is also not necessary to make new database structures at IMR, as all the collected data will be available through Saildrone data portals. IMR emphasises that we do not intend to enter into a new contract with Saildrone after the pilot study has ended. We will first assess how far the technology has come and whether it is useable for our monitoring and research purposes. If we believe that this is the case, the use of USV will be published as an open tender competition at a later date.