Sometimes things don't turn out the way they were planned. Initially the short three-day cruise AL636b on RV ALKOR end of July was intended to accompany test remediation in Lübeck Bay. Since these had to be postponed, GEOMAR scientists decided to turn the cruise into a data acquisition, sensor, and system testing cruise. Together with project partners from the German Navy, German federal police, University of Rostock, KUM they brought three remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), three autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), two small landers, a synthetic aperture sonar (SAS) and an artificial bomb, all of it used within the three days.
A topic of special importance is the protection of critical infrastructure. One aspect in this direction is to perform change-detections mission with AUVs in respective areas to detect and identify new objects. A dataset was acquired that will be used within MMinE-SwEEPER to develop and test software that combines different types of sensor data such as multi beam echo sounders (MBES), side scan sonar (SSS) or SAS data to enhance current manual and therefore time-consuming approaches.
It is known that rocks and munition on the seafloor can move due to currents and wave motion, but the amount and dynamics are not fully known. For this purpose, scientists from the University of Rostock have built an artificial bomb with integrated motion sensors to record this movement. It was deployed for two days in the Kolberger Heide close to Kiel and is part of the change detection dataset.
The cruise also served to strengthen existing collaborations between scientists, the German Navy, and the Federal Police, all of them project partners in MMinE-SwEEPER. Autonomous underwater vehicles of the German Navy and GEOMAR were used in similar conditions and the results were compared. GEOMAR and the Federal Police operate similar mini ROVs. Three different ROV systems were on board (DeepTrekker PIVOT, DeepTrekker Revolution and BlueROV). The workflows, on deck procedures and experiences were exchanged during the cruise.
Last but not least, further areas were mapped with the SAS system, ALKORs Multibeam system and the AUVs to extend the UXO databases. This is an ongoing effort to obtain a comprehensive and objective picture of the distribution and state of the UXO in German waters. This, in turn, provides politicians with a basis for making informed and responsible decisions.
