CCS - MV Bluefin 2020 V01 Bioacoustics

Full description

This bio-acoustic data was collected during a December 2020 voyage on the Australian Maritime College training vessel MV Bluefin as part of the Carbon Capture and Storage project. The survey was conducted in the nearshore of the Gippsland region. See voyage report MV Bluefin 202001 Voyage Summary.docx for detailed overview of the voyage.

Simrad 120 kHz bio-acoustic water column and seafloor backscatter + experimental gas-seep detection multibeam

Simrad 120 kHz echosounders are part of the Bluefin’s installed instrument suite. Simrad 38 kHz was installed but not used as ws interfering with Kongsberg EM2040 multibeam. An experimental multibeam system was used on this voyage. This comprised four 28 degree transducers that were powered by 200 kHz WBT Transceiver. A custom built multiplexer was used to cycle through the four transducers. This system was used to conduct experiments with a gas-release system on the seafloor to assess utility of the system to detect the release. Data was acquired using Simrad EK80 Version 1.12 software logging at EK60 resolution. Acoustic data were recorded in UTC time. UTC offset would be 10 hrs.
Echosounder details

Echosounder | Frequency | Mode | Transceiver Serial no | Transducer Model & serial No | Comments
Simrad EK60 | 38 kHz | CW | - | ES38B, SN30333 | Not operated as was interfering with EM2040 multibeam
Simrad EK60 | 120 kHz | CW | - | ES120-7C, 120\t|
Simrad WBT Tube | 200 kHz | CW | - | 253687 | ES200-28. | Custom four transducer pseudo multibeam head

Survey settings:

Frequency (kHz) | Power | Pulse duration (ms) | Logging Range (m)

120 | 125 | 1.024 | 30
105 | 45 | 1.024 | 30

Calibration Information:

Bio-acoustic system was calibrated using the standard sphere method for survey settings on 14th of August 2020 at CCS study site. See separate calibration report for details