Page 27: of Marine Technology Magazine (March 2020)

Armed and ready:

An Ecotone Underwater Hyperspectral

Imager, or UHI, attached to an ROV and stand-alone.

Photos: Ecotone quinor was so impressed with

Ecotone’s UHI sensing, or hyperspectral camera tech, its investment arm … invested.

EAquaculture giant, SalMar, bought a version of the tech to moni- tor biological conditions, a job normally done by humans. What both companies see is the UHI’s ability to count and de? ne trouble spots while automatically codify- ing and archiving innumerable digital im- ages for speedy analysis. In fact, digitally notating and analysing the unseen could offer the fastest way to environmental compliance and maintenance assessments over large areas.

Speed is essential, for an environmen- tal impact assessment survey — for an oil? eld, a pipeline or a salmon farm — is only the start of site work. These early steps could entail photographing marine biology over an area that could comprise hundreds of kilometers (for a pipeline survey) or just a square mile for a salmon farm. For inspections of existing pipelines or other subsea infrastructure by ROV or

UAV, the market offers no all-in-one sur- vey tool of biology and pipeline health: bathymetric surveys are just that, and pipeline surveys today require a pooling of expert minds.

While Ecotone’s equipment promises speed, the development path to ef? cient surveying by UHI attached to ROV or

UAV began slowly. The camera itself was a 2009 NTNU university spin-off that fol- lowed successful optical ? ngerprinting tests. Its hyperspectral imager — which sees 400 colors versus the HD camera’s red, green and blue — quickly showed it could do inspections of vast, sprawling, subsea infrastructure and of seabed life.

It excelled at pipelines, where anomalies could range from torn seals to worn welds, corrosion and leaks. The UHI could ? nd www.marinetechnologynews.com

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