Page 61: of Marine News Magazine (April 2012)

www.marinelink.com MN61speeds over 2 m/s, and from vessels at a speed of over 10 knots. Even though radar has been proven to provide critical aid to an oil spill response operation, the established method for indicating relative differ- ences in oil slick thickness is by scan- ning a reported oil spill with a cooled thermal-infrared (IR) camera. The oil covered sea surface has a different temperature than the surrounding waters, because of the insulatingproperty of oil. When viewed through cooled IR camera with a wave length of approximately 4-5 µm and high sensitivity, the image color turns from light grey to dark grey on approximately 5 µm thickness of the oil slick, and the color turns to whiteon thick oil slicks of up to some mil-limeters in thickness. IR cameras are not well suited for examining thin layers of oil because there are only marginal or no temperature differ- ences between thinly covered areas and the surrounding sea. IR cameras cannot be used for auto-matic oil spill detection and outliningin real-time because they must be focused on fairly small beam angles,consequently illuminating only asmall area at any given time. An optimal solution for oil spilldetection and response is the integra- tion of the automatic detection andreal-time image display functions of the radar, the oil spill verification and thickness classification functions ofthe cooled IR camera, and a daylightcamera and a search light for day and night operation support. This solu- tion is currently offered by Rutter with its complete Oil Spill Response and Management system. To date, Rutter has sold many sigma S6 Oil Spill Detection systems to responders; including 12 MSRC.