SEA Snoop-A Mobile Oceanographic Sensor Suite

Foster-Miller will build on the highly mobile and long range (9 mi) bottom crawling systems of the Lemmings family of vehicles, used to perform surveillance and reconnaissance in the shallow water (SW) and very shallow water (VSW) regimes. Lemmings, Sea Dog and in-house research efforts have attached a variety of sensors including acoustic, optical, bottom condition and water-column characterization instruments with great success. Single units can measure in both the look-up or look-out mode and they have intimate contact with the bottom for direct sea floor measurements. Used in groups, the Lemmings can perform across-volume characterization. The advantages of operating directly in the highly turbid and turbulent VSW and SZ are significant and unique to the Lemmings system. In addition, the time and spatial varying capability minimizes point-measurement bias and greatly improves the large area understanding.