April 13, 2021
The British Royal Navy has tested cutting-edge software to map the seabed close to shore in hours – not days or weeks. Survey vessel HMS
Magpie was able to chart the waters around Plymouth purely using regular radar installed on shipping the world over and a specialist computer programme which measures wave height.
Using that data and information about currents, the software can produce a detailed profile of the seabed in a matter of hours – without the ship or boat having to physically sail over the area being surveyed.
Radar Bathymetry
All the system needs is wind and a swell to generate waves – plus computing power. It is not as detailed as the scans that