The status of geological dredging techniques

Scientific sea-floor dredging is currently used in marine geology primarily by the hard-rock community interested in the recovery of basement rock samples from the unsedimented deep ocean floor. The technique has generally been eclipsed by ocean drilling for recovery of sedimentary rocks, because of perceived uncertainties in the location of sampling and in the representativeness of recovered material. This contribution reviews dredging equipment currently in use by marine geological institutions and refers to pinger attachments that allow precise information on the behaviour of the dredge to be telemetered back to the ship. We argue that improvements in ship navigation and transponder navigation at the seafloor, when used in conjunction with surface and/or deeply towed sidescan and swathemapping surveys, now allow for considerably less uncertainty on the location of dredge sampling. Refined sorting criteria for dredge hauls are now also available. Recent comparisons of regional sample recovery by ocean drilling and by dredge sampling indicate that the dredge hauls can usefully supplement the drilling data in the construction of sedimentary and tectonic histories of seafloor areas.     

Real-Time Adjustment Underwater Positioning System for Submarines

A rapid real-time adjustment scheme is proposed for improving the precision of the conventional short-base line (SBL) positioning fix system used by submarines and other underwater vehicles. In the proposed approach, an initial position estimate is obtained by solving the conventional SBL tracking equations of the submarine given the assumptions of a constant speed of sound in water and a straight-line propagation path. In the first stage of the real-time adjustment procedure, this initial estimate is corrected using an iterative computation scheme based on a 3D geometry model. The improved position estimate is then used to compute a new, more accurate value of the speed of sound in water. Finally, in the second stage of the real-time adjustment procedure, the corrected speed of sound in water and the discrepancy between the original and corrected position estimates obtained in the first adjustment procedure are applied to update the coordinates of the submarine based on the second signal received from the pinger. The numerical results show that the proposed real-time adjustment system yields a significant improvement in the accuracy of the positioning fix estimates compared to those obtained from the conventional SBL method or the SBL method with the first adjustment procedure only.