July 2008 Issue

Feature Articles

THE NEPTUNE CANADA REGIONAL CABLED OCEAN OBSERVATORY
Dr. R. Chris Barnes, Dr. Mairi M.R. Best and Dr. Adam Zielinski (University of Victoria) give an overview of the progress of installation and the science experiments designed for the observatory.

WHOI LONG CORE SYSTEM INSTALLED ON THE RV KNORR
Ken FitzGerald (The Glosten Associates) and Jim Broda (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution) review deck gear design and vessel modifications for a massive new piston coring system.

MONITORING CONSTRUCTION OF THE NEPTUNE
REGIONAL TRANSMISSION SYSTEM IN REAL TIME
Jaak Van den Sype, David Davis and John Duschang (HDR) talk about supervising the suspended sediment plume created by trenching operations for the East Coast’s largest undersea cabling project.

HOW TWIST CAN AFFECT BRAIDED MARINE ROPES
Peter Davies (French Ocean Research Institute) and Nick O’Hear (Tension Technology International) reveal rotation’s influence on the residual strength of high-performance HMPE ropes used for towing and deep-sea handling operations.

MORE POWER FOR SEA-GOING, BATTERY-POWERED VEHICLES OF ALL KINDS
Robert N. O'Brien (University of Victoria) shows how NiMH batteries, lighter than lead-acid batteries and safer than Li-ion batteries, are easily magnetized to increase efficiency.

AUTOMATIC EXTRACTION OF COASTLINES FROM SAR IMAGES
H. Hakan Maras (General Command of Mapping) reviews how accurate coastline mapping for GIS vector data sets can be achieved with automatic extraction from SAR imagery.

EVALUATION OF NAUTICAL BOTTOM DETECTION TECHNIQUES
Stijn Claeys (GEMS International) studies the need for rheology-based instruments to determine the nautical bottom.

APPLYING SOFTWARE RADIO TECHNIQUES TO UNDERWATER ACOUSTIC COMMUNICATION
Emma Jones (Sea (Group) Ltd.) outlines how to improve product flexibility and interoperability through the use of software radio techniques and associated standards.

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NEXT MONTH:
Oceans ‘08 MTS/IEEE conference preview...Innovations in ocean optics for coastal and open-ocean mooring applications...Technology innovation: a new shallow-water retractable autonomous buoy platform...Differentiated underwater sensor network deployment...An autonomous self-mooring vehicle for littoral and coastal observations.