Sonar Mapping for Safety

ROV Innovations has been called upon to intensively map local swimming areas for potential underwater hazards coming up to Summer in South East Queensland. Our team used our high resolution scanning sonar from our custom designed commercial vessel to map the first area in Wivenhoe Dam.

New swimming area due to open at Wivenhoe Dam

ROV Innovations commercial vessel, in 2C certification

We were able to quickly and efficiently identify 3 immediate hazards in the yet to be opened swimming area with the sonar, and with swift action by our client, arranged our commercial dive team to enter and remove them. In this instance, the hazards proved to be red Cedar tree stumps standing a meter tall and approximately a meter in diameter, and a 5m long log on the dam bed. Using an underwater hydraulic chainsaw, we were able to remove the potential hazards to ensure that swimmers in the area would not injure themselves.

Map of the new swimming area at Wivenhoe dam showing potential hazards

One of the Red Cedar tree stumps removed - this one is approx 1m in diameter.

Due to the low visibility around the bed of the dam, the sonar proved to be the only reliable method to identify any potential hazards to swimmers. Using either Divers or ROVs in this instance would not be viable as they could easily have missed these hazards by a meter and not seen them. Only the high resolution scanning sonar allowed us to have 100% confidence that we had covered the entire area of concern.

By combining our multiple resources (in this instance - Sonar, Commercial Vessel and Dive Team) we were able to provide the client with an optimal solution with minimal downtime.