Today the weather was perfect for the test dive of TOBI2. TOBI stands for Towed Ocean Bottom
Instrument; this vehicle is a deep-towed 30kHz sidescan sonar system develop at
NOC, designed to acoustically image the deep ocean floor.
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| Cruise P.I. Robin Plumley (centre) |
Used in depths between 200 m and 6000 m, the vehicle is fitted with sidescan,
profiler sonars, magnetometer, CTD instruments, vehicle orientation and
attitude sensors, fibre-optic telemetry, Inverted Ultra Short Baseline
Navigation (iUSBL), a fibre-optic gyroscope, a bathymetric phased array and a
built-in self test and health check system.
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| Duncan Matthew gives the TOBI2 'tool box' talk
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A 600 kg depressor weight linked to TOBI2 helps the vehicle maintain depth, as
much of its bulk is syntactic foam, a buoyant material used widely in
oceanographic technology. The depressor
weight has a box of electro-optical connections which enable the deployed
vehicle to maintain communications with the ship. There were some problems with this initially
which the team quickly rectified and the launch was given the green light. Duncan Matthew gave the team the ‘tool box’
talk and once the team had completed final checks, TOBI2 was deployed over the rear deck of the
James Cook and recovered several hours later.
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| TOBI2 is recovered onto the rear deck |
TOBI vehicles are used for exploring mid ocean ridges, monitoring gas hydrates
and slope stability of the continental shelf, undertaking environmental impact
studies and monitoring the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).
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| James, Dave and Allan working on the depressor weight |
