Page 53: of Marine Technology Magazine (June 2011)

www.seadiscovery.com Marine Technology Reporter 53 “We have recently built and deliv- ered out first subsea digital video recorder for a Canadian client and plans are well underway for the launch of a new suite of cutting edge products by the end of the sec- ond quarter of 2011.

We are also in the process of com- pleting the design of two highly engineered electric pan and tilt units, along with standard and high definition subsea video cameras and

LED lighting systems. These inno- vative products complement our existing range of OceanTools gyro- compasses, video overlays, digital

CP probes and underwater dis- plays.”

Marport Awarded Sonar Contract

By General Dynamics Canada

Marport Deep Sea Technologies won a contract to manufacture the

TrailBlazer Sonar for defense con- tractor General Dynamics Canada.

The work will be carried out by

Marport facilities in Ottawa and

Cornwall, Ontario. Financial details were not disclosed.

TrailBlazer is designed to be a cost- effective, high-resolution sonar specifically designed for mine and obstacle avoidance on naval vessels operating in littoral or deep waters.

The system uses a high frequency phased array transducer interfaced to Marport’s Software Defined

Sonar transceiver electronics, together with an open architecture, digital signal processing waveform suite with graphical user interfaces specifically tailored to mine and obstacle avoidance missions. The product is a result of ongoing co- development efforts between

Marport and General Dynamics

Canada.

Retired from USF, “RDSEA” Expands

After 21 years with the University of South Florida (USF), Rick Cole, President of RDSEA International,

Inc. (RDSEA) shifts his attention to this fast-growing company within the ocean community. Cole, recently retired from the College of Marine Science, USF, St

Petersburg, FL, has broad knowledge in the development and implementation of “ocean technologies and observ- ing systems”. With RDSEA, a Florida-based oceano- graphic consulting company founded in 2002; Cole will provide the experience and expertise necessary in project development from design conception to data dissemination of offshore technologies worldwide.

The timing of this change coincides with the expansion of coastal monitoring around the U.S. and international coastlines as well as in blue water science, offshore alternative energy solutions and oil and gas environmental assess- ments. Beginning his career with NOAA in the early 1980’s in Seattle, WA,

Cole performed hydrographic surveys in Hawaii and Alaska and at the Pacific

Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) on federal oceanographic pro- grams in the tropical regions of the Pacific. He then moved onto academia for the next two-plus decades. He is a co-founding member of USF’s Ocean

Circulation Group (OCG, R. Weisberg) beginning in 1989 engaged on

NOAA, NSF, ONR, USGS and other State and local projects and programs.

In 1993, the OCG set the footprint for one of the first coastal monitoring programs in the U.S. in the eastern Gulf of Mexico along the west Florida shelf with what eventually became the “offshore component” of the State of

Florida’s “Coastal Ocean Monitoring and Prediction System” (COMPS) a sub-component of the Southeastern Coastal Ocean Observing Regional

Association (SECOORA), governed by the U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing

System (US-IOOS). Cole managed and choreographed the offshore side of

COMPS and other deep ocean programs from the OCG laboratory at USF and at sea as Chief Scientist and Dive Master on over seventy research cruis- es. Cole now takes the reins of RDSEA to bridge gaps within the ocean com- munity between federal agencies, universities and the private sector on scien- tific, engineering and environmental monitoring endeavors. RDSEA offers over 30 years of experience on, in and under our oceans on a wide range of projects from the beach on out to over 5000 meters depth (including bays and estuaries) with a focus on “air-sea interaction” and “ocean circulation”.

RDSEA’s most recent project involved the design, development, manufacture and deployment of several moored buoy systems for the First Institute of

Oceanography, Qingdao, China and the Administration of Marine Fisheries

Research, Jakarta, Indonesia on the “Research Moored Array for African-

Asian-Australian Monsoon Prediction Program (RAMA, a subcomponent of the Indian Ocean Observing System, “IndOOS”).

Email: rickcole@ rdsea.com www.rdsea.com