Gaia Blu - Scientific instruments

Scientific instruments on the Gaia Blu vessel.

 

Scientific Echosounders and attitude sensors

Echosounders are sonar systems transmitting acoustic waves into the water column and recording the time span between emission and return of a pulse. These acoustic systems can be used to observe echoes from the seafloor, allowing to reconstruct the bathymetry of the seabed, or from targets in the water column.   

Gaia Blu is equipped with several hull-mounted echosounders for different applications. Single-beam sonars are typically used for fishery research and for physical studies of the water masses, while three models of multi-beam sonar working at different frequencies are used for seafloor mapping extending to full ocean depth  

• Kongsberg EM304 (50 kHz) Multibeam Sonar for Deep Water  (1000-5000 m) 
• Kongsberg EM712 (70-100 kHz) Multibeam Sonar for Intermediate Water  (200-1000/1200 m) 
• Kongsberg EM2040-04 (200-400 kHz) Multibeam Sonar for Shallow Water (< 250 m) 
• Simrad EA 600 Single beam Echo Sounder (12-16, 38-9, 120-25 e 200-28) 
• SH90 – Sonar for fishing 
• Simrad EK60 Single beam Echo Sounder (ES18, ES38B, ES70-C, ES120-7C, ES200-7C e 710-30) con software EK80 
• Kongsberg Seapath 380 Position, attitude, time and Heading sensor 
• Kongsberg Seatex MRU-5 Motion Sensor 

 

Chirp Profiler  

Chirp sub-bottom profilers are acoustic systems that use acoustic waves to image sub-surface features buried tens of meters beneath the seafloor. Gaia Blu is supplied with a hull-mounted Chirp profiler including a wide range of frequencies, which can cover full ocean depth. 

• Knudsen Chirp 3260 3.5/12 kHz o   Knudsen 3260 – Chirp sonar profiler, 12kHz + 9 transducers 3.5kHz 

 

Acoustic doppler current profilers 

Acoustic Doppler Current Profilers (ADCP) are sensors that use sound waves to infer the speed and direction of currents along the water column. The ADCPs mounted onboard GaiaBlu work at different frequencies, allowing to assess marine currents from subsurface waters down to thousand  meters depth. 

• Workhorse, Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler  
• (ADCP; 300 kHz; 100-120m; mounted in the ship's hull) 
• Pinnacle, Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler  
• (ADCP; 45 kHz; 700-1000m; mounted in the ship's hull) 
• 2 x Workhorse II Sentinel (L-ADCP; 300 kHz; 100-120m; as deck facilities) 

 

Subsea acoustic positioning system 

Underwater positioning systems are to determine the location of subsea objects, such as remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) or autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). In marine research it is used to track underwater vehicles or marine animals. 

• HiPAP 352(P) – Ultra-short baseline system (USBL), underwater positioning 

 

CTD and water sampling  

GaiaBlu is supplied with instruments including CTD for the measurement of temperature, conductivity and depth along the water column and auxiliary sensors. Such instruments are generally mounted on a frame, the “rosette” that is deployed from the vessel side, which also carries water-sampling bottles triggered at the desired depth by the onboard operator. 

• CTD-Rosette system: LARS and Ibercisa winch (40 kN), 6000m Vectran cable, CTD SBE911plus and SBE32 Carousel with 24 Niskin 12 L bottles 
• Wet Laboratory equipped with: Extractor hood; Refrigerators (+4, -20, -80 °C); TCF 50 stove; StereoMicroscope Zeiss Discovery V8 +Axiocam 208 color; SOMA SINUS SODIAL volumetric sinusoidal pump, mod. SCN25-SD-15, for continuous sampling of uncontaminated surface water; Milli-Q water system 

 

Underway water characterization  

GaiaBlu is equipped with a water line for continuous water sampling, which also provide water for a sensor collecting real-time data of sea surface conductivity and temperature  

• SBE 45 MicroTSG Thermosalinograph  

 

Sound velocity profilers 

A sound velocity profiler (SVP) is a sensor designed to measure the velocity of sound in the water, which is a parameter directly influenced by physical characteristics of water masses including temperature, salinity and pressure. Measuring the velocity profile throughout the water column is the base of several underwater acoustic equipment and Gaia Blu is equipped with SVPs for punctual measurement along the water column and continuous measurement in the subsurface.  

• Valeport: Sound Velocity Profiler MIDAS SVP (6000 m), Sound Velocity Sensor MiniSVS, altimeter VA500. 

 

Seafloor and subseafloor sampling  

• Carmacoring swing and CP-20 gravity/piston core barrel (for core recovery up to 25m), 90 kN Ibercisa winch with 6000m of steel cable 

 

Meteorogical Station 

Gaia Blu is fitted with a weather station for the collection of  meteorological data including air temperature, atmospheric pressure, relative humidity, wind speed and direction. Furthermore, Gaia Blu has installed on board an automatic photometer for the study of aerosol dynamics, an innovative instrument for aerosol detection in the marine environment that collect and transmit real-time data after automatic processing onboard (data available at https://www.loa.univlille.fr/photons#) 

• Ecosearch SM45 control unit, Apogee 
• SP-510 Thermopile Pyranometer to measure broad-spectrum short-wave radiation 
• SL-510 – Thermopile Pyrgeometer to measure broad-spectrum long wave radiation 
• LI-COR, LI-192 – Campbell Scientific PAR Sensor for the measurement of Photosynthetically Active Radiation (PAR) in aquatic environments. 
• CSAT3B – Triaxial Sonic Anemometer to measure the three orthogonal wind components and the speed of sound 
• Campbell Scientific SI-111 Precision infrared radiometer for the measurement of water surface temperature without physical contact 
• Campbell Scientific CR1000XDatalogger 
• FishSky 360° with Mini PC – All Sky Camera 
•  

Internet connection, Cloud and Computing systems  

4 compute nodes, each with:  

• 1 Intel Xeon Gold processor, 16C/32T  
•  128 Gb RAM   
•  2 480GB disks  
•  4.10 GbE base-T ports  
•  VMware vCenter and ESXi SW licenses  
•  Scale-up storage system with the following features:  
• 12Tb SSD Read Intensive disks  
•  100Tb SAS/SATA disks configured in RAID6 (or equivalent)  
•  Multiple volume sharing protocols, including NFS  
•  Two Top of the Rack switches, each with 28 10Bse-T ports and 2 QSFP28 ports 
•  Tape Library with LTFS-type filesystems Tape Cartridges for a total volume of 100Tb  
•  Management SW: QSTAR Archive (for a volume of 100Tb) 
• C-band Maritime VSAT Antenna System (Model v240 C) 
• Sea Tel 97 series 
• Land communication system (LTE, 5G) 
• Starlink Flat High-Performance Kit (Maritime/Energy)