GPS World, February 2016
WATCH MARKET SURVEY 2 GNSS Echo Sounder Guides Medical Ship through Uncharted Waters A n Australian company Jeremy Schierer a YWAM volunteer and master mariner uses the CEESCOPE Echo Sounder to chart a river in Papua New Guinea Photo courtesy of YWAM FEBRUARY 2016 WWW GPSWORLD COM GPS WORLD 39 that manufacturers GNSS echo sounders aided the aiders leading a medical ship through uncharted waters in Papua New Guinea The CEESCOPE echo sounder enabled the ship to reach volunteers who were working to save the life of a newborn The ship operated by YWAM Medical Ships Australia YWAM MSA visits remote villages in Papua New Guinea giving communities access to life saving medical and dental services The village locations are accessed by river and while often there is adequate tide information to help navigate there are no available charts or bathymetry data for the passages upriver Without a navigable route to follow the medical ships simply could not travel to locations where help is needed the most To solve this problem YWAM decided to make its own charts with help from CEE HydroSystems Using a small fast launch equipped with a CEESCOPE single beam echo sounder and GPS hydrographic survey system YWAM volunteer and master mariner Jeremy Schierer set out to find safe routes through vast river deltas ahead of the medical ship While surveying at high speed to maximize the area covered Schierer executed reconnaissance patterns along the river while continuously updating the hydrographic survey plan based on the results seen Survey data gathered and processed in HYPACK acquisition software were exported to the navigation system of the ship to provide waypoints marking the safe passage route along the river Used with available and observed tide data the navigator of the vessel could confidently travel upriver without the risk of grounding The CEESCOPE is a one box survey system that can be swapped between the two available 42 meter and 52 meter boats It can be used without an acquisition PC on the survey launch if needed all data recorded on the internal memory and can run on its own battery power for an extended duration With operation in remote areas on small boats reliability and usability were key for YWAM YWAM also used the CEESCOPE with HYPACK from the wheelhouse to navigate the ship along the surveyed routes on custom electronic charts In the third year of YWAMs operation in Papua New Guinea Schierer recorded a staggering 3400 kilometers 2000 miles of bathymetry to help navigate the Pacific Link All of the rivers were uncharted before the ship traveled upstream With incomplete tide station coverage determining the ships path was a complex calculation Despite this and complicated by a bore tide YWAM was able to take its vessel 75 kilometers The track of the medical ship on the previously uncharted Bamu River Continued on 40
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