990 km of Cable Route Surveyed

Monday, April 19, 2010

From Cecile Durand on RSN cable route survey cruise

All of our deep-water surveys from Axial seamount to the base of Oregon’s continental slope are now complete. This totals about 990km of cable route so far.

We have also managed to do most of the survey work in the approach to Pacific City and should soon be heading south towards the Newport Line survey (Segments 2 through 4).

The bad weather encountered at the beginning of our survey operations was followed by really nice conditions close to shore… good timing! Thanks to good weather, we’ve been able to work more or less non-stop (24 hrs a day), with a few interruptions due to equipment issues.

So far, with some route development, we have been able to skirt around areas of hard bottom where cable burial would be a challenge. Our goal is to achieve 100% burial from the shore to a position just past the 700 fathoms mark offshore (~1300m) in order to reduce the risk of cable damage due to fishing activities. Our contractor (L3- Maripro) with the support of the TE Subcom (formerly TYCO) onboard rep is now engineering the post-survey route for all segments that have been successfully surveyed. We’re making progress, ensuring that no data gaps are left behind and sufficient data are collected before we leave this region.