Fastwave Voyager Oil Spill Tracking Buoy

Fastwave's new Voyager oil spill and ocean current tracking buoy provides near real-time ocean surface current velocity and sea surface temperature data from anywhere in the world's oceans. It has been specifically designed to meet client requirements for ocean current trajectory modelling and oil spill response preparedness. The reporting duty cycle can be remotely adjusted by the user. At a typical reporting interval of 3 hours, the Voyager has endurance of approximately 250 days. Compact size, simple operation and rugged constructuion makes the Voyager ideal for rapid deployment in emergency situations. It can be drop deployed from a vessel or platform up to a height of 15m , or deployed  from an aircraft with a parachute. The Voyager is the latest in a long line of tracking buoys produced by Fastwave since 2005, with clients including BP (USA), Chevron Australia, Conoco Phillips, Woodside Energy, Fugro, Saipem, RPS, BMT, Jacobs and many others.   
Due for release in the next few months is a version of the Voyager with an integrated Chelsea Technologies fluorometer (pictured).  In addition to oil spill tracking and sea surface temperature monitoring, the fluorometer will enable the detection of hydrocarbons in the surface layer. This will allow more accurate definition and tracking of oil spill boundaries, and assist with the identification of naturally occurring seeps. Retro-fitting drifter buoys with fluorometers may also be possible.     
Chelsea Technologies Group has a proven range of in-situ sensors optimised for monitoring crude and refined oil from coastal margins to deep ocean. Originally designed for military use these highly reliable, robust, high sensitivity fluorometers are in use around the world. . All sensors are suitable for use in gliders, undulating vehicles, moored, profiled or diver hand held. Fastwave distributes Chelsea Technologies sensors in Australia.


Ocean Gliders for Safe, Cost Effective Data Acquisition

The rapidly evolving capabilities of long endurance, ocean going robotic "drones" such as Wave Gliders and Sea Gliders are making them increasingly relevant to the requirements of the offshore oil and gas sector. They can acquire large amounts of data autonomously, safely and at a fraction of the cost of vessel based systems, from the ocean surface and the water column. Their effectiveness has been proven in large scale oil spill emergencies, as well as other applications such as marine water quality monitoring and harvesting data from subsea instrumentation.
Fastwave is Australian channel partner for Liquid Robotics Wave Gliders (USA) and Kongsberg Sea Glider systems, supporting these technologies with customised sensor and communication payload integration. Fastwave's Sean Groombridge and Dr Max Ong recently attended the inaugural Liquid Robotics Partner conference in Koh Samui, Thailand, where they presented the latest Wave Glider sensor integration projects that Fastwave is working on.


Controlling Marine Biofouling UV light

 

Fastwave evaluated AML Oceanographics UV-based biofoul protection over an extended period of time in the temperate waters of Western Australia, a region where subsea instruments naturally experience an increased rate of biofoul accumulation. Biofouling has a major impact on the performance of subsea instrumentation in Australian waters, resulting in increased vessel based maintenance effort and cost to ensure reliable performance. UV-Xchange was applied in a controlled test that resulted in significant prevention of biofoul accumulation over a period of several months. The outcome achieved with the UVXchange approach displayed superior results compared to a number of passive anti-biofoul methods tested alongside. Fastwave therefore recommends the integration of UV-based anti-biofoul strategies onto underwater monitoring equipment to increase their endurance, reliability and optimise maintenance costs.
Fastwave is Australian Distributor for AML Oceanographic of Canada. AML is an innovative manufacturer of Sound Velocity, CTD and Environmental sensors, probes and instruments. Their unique UVXchange underwater UV lights offer an effective way to reduce the costs of controlling biofouling on subsea instruments.


Fastwave Supports Bremer Canyon Marine Research

The Bremer Canyon is a subsea feature located approximately 60 kilometres off the remote South West coast of Australia.Once a year, in February and March, this location becomes the epicentre for an unbelievable intensity of marine life.  Whaler sharks, giant squid, sperm whales, masses of sea birds and the largest group of killer whales in the Southern Hemisphere suddenly congregate in a small area of ocean. It is suspected that a leak from a massive hydrocarbon pocket under the seabed fuses with the surrounding water to create an ice-like reef known as methane hydrate. This in turn sparks a food chain involving crustaceans releasing billions of nutrient-rich eggs into the desolate waters. Killer whales are present in groups exceeding 100 individuals, quite possibly the largest aggregation of orca in the southern hemisphere.  The Bremer Canyon Killer Whale research project seeks to uncover the mystery behind this remarkable event and is dedicated to the preservation of this beautiful wilderness location.  David Riggs has been observing the scenario since 2005 and subsequently produced a film that aired internationally, drawing attention to this remarkable natural event.  The intense and predictable concentration of diverse marine life make for a compelling research project, using hydrophones, Sea Gliders, drifter buoys, UAV's , tracking devices and other equipment. Fastwave has supported the project through provision of equipment and Iridium satellite services.


Fastwave to offer Em-Trak AIS

The Automatic Identification System (AIS) is an automatic tracking system used on ships and by vessel traffic services (VTS) for identifying and locating vessels by electronically exchanging data with other nearby ships, AIS base stations, and satellites. Vessels fitted with AIS transceivers can be tracked by AIS base stations located along coast lines or, when out of range of terrestrial networks, through a growing number of satellites that are fitted with special AIS receivers. The International Maritime Organization's International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea requires AIS to be fitted aboard international voyaging ships with gross tonnage (GT) of 300 or more, and all passenger ships regardless of size.
The Em-Trak AIS technology is developed and manufactured by SRT Marine Technology (UK), world leaders in the development of AIS technology and product solutions for the global marine electronics industry. Fastwave integrates AIS systems with its other marine data acquistion systems , providing enhanced situational awareness of fixed and mobile assets in the marine environment.


New Fastwave data management sytsem enhances data visualisation and reporting

 

To provide clients with a fully integrated data acquisition and management solution, Fastwave offers a secure data management and reporting system. Typical applications for this are remote monitoring, control and tracking of fixed and mobile assets and sensor systems. The system is used for applications as diverse as real-time metocean data assimilation, marine water quality monitoring, vessel and aircraft tracking, remote image capture, subsea sensor monitoring and remote personnel communication.
The system was recently upgraded by Fastwave’s in-house development team to enable highly configurable reporting, which can incorporate metadata such as local weather forecasts and observations. Unit values can be disabled or enabled in report outputs, and preferred output unit types defined on a per user basis. Data visualisation widgets allow visualisation of asset outputs for known and configured unit types such as pressure, temperature, mass and length, plus many other uncommon unit types. A new statistics sub system builds statistics on predefined date boundaries (daily, weekly, monthly, annual) for commonly used statistics (min, max, average, count, total, std dev etc).
Fastwave runs and maintains its own internal Nominatim server which provides private location and city searches using a mapping page. Latitude and longitude can be entered into the mapping page to search for manually entered locations, or show current location as reported by a web browser. In the event of an asset equipped with GPS not being able to transmit its location via GPS, the system can provide Iridium Satellite location data on configurable accuracy boundaries (ie. < 5km) with appropriate notification throughout the Fastwave reporting system and dashboard
The upgraded Fastwave Data Management System runs entirely on MQTT making it event driven and capable of delivering asset payloads to end clients with very little delay (typically < 5 seconds). This feature enables client in house development teams to extend any existing systems they may have as well as take advantage of the metadata services. This service can also deliver custom reports created by Fastwave to suit specific end user needs all over a secure 256bit TLS 1.2 secured connection