Protective Technologies and Installation/Implementation Methods for Undersea Instrumentation

The ocean bottom is a protective location for sensors, unless a trawl fishing rig drags over the sensor. Because a trawl fishing rig scrapes the ocean floor and scoops fish into a net, it can be devastating to bottom mounted sensors, especially when sensors are vertically tethered in the water column with sub-surface floats. The upward reaching appendages in a typical Navy testing range are easy prey against the trawl rig"s heavy chains and rock hopper leading edges, which snag the sensors and damage or rip them from their tethers. This program has developed passive, innovative methods of protecting the typical tethered sensor from becoming entangled in or damaged by a direct trawl rig strike. Specifically, this effort is targeted for the protection of arrays in planned shallow water Navy undersea training ranges. Because the unique SkySight Deployable Trawl Safe system is compact enough to be deployed through a modified linear cable engine, the time and cost to incorporate the needed hazard protection is reduced when installing large undersea arrays. The successful Phase I used scale models and rigorous test analysis. The Phase II effort will build on this success and result in an ocean-demonstrated sensor protection system.