Wreck Finder
Wreck Finder Features
- Sunlight Viewable Monochrome Display
- Wreck Identification Software
- 150m Forward or Sideways Range
- 3D Sidescan Display
- Forward Alarm
- Digital Depth
- Speed Option
Wrecks are of interest to many seafarers, divers and fishermen especially. There are tens of thousands of wrecks around the English coast alone. Anyone who has tried to locate a wreck knows how difficult it can be, but now help is at hand in the form of our new and unique Wreckfinder.
We have been designing Forward Looking Sonar since 1992. These display a two dimensional view of the seabed ahead of the boat. But our patented FLS actually has the potential to do much more because the returning echo carries within it a lot of information about the nature of the seabed.
Wrecks are not the only man made objects on the seabed, there are also mines, and naval sonar has been developed which can distinguish mines buried in mud at some distance. This technology is newly available for peaceful purposes, and we have married it to our proven FLS technology to produce the Echopilot Wreckfinder.
The heart of the Wreckfinder is the "classifier" which is a clever piece of software that can learn how to recognise a wreck on the seabed. Our test vessel, the MV Echopilot, has spent many hours at sea hovering over known wrecks collecting data with an FLS in order to train the classifier. Just as we can distinguish between natural and artificial objects so the classifier can learn exactly the same skill. In fact the classifier in the Wreckfinder is better than the human eye at discerning a wreck because it uses features within the FLS signal that do not show on the screen. Our classifier looks for 10 different features within the echo signal, things like shape and strength and more complex features too.
The Echopilot Wreckfinder is based on the FLS Gold although it has both hardware and software modifications. It uses the same professional transducer with bronze skin fitting. The through hull fitting has 3 inches of useable thread which enables the transducer to be mounted vertically in both planes in most hulls. There is a choice between single transducer installation or two transducers plus our changeover switch.
The Wreckfinder has all the features of the Sidescan, with the exception of the optional repeater. The wreckfinding facility works in both forward and sidescan modes, so that at any time the boat is moving it can be searching for wrecks. The presence of a wreck under the boat is shown by a high reading on the confidence bar chart.
