Underwater surveillance technology

Marine camera, integrated software offer improved underwater surveillance, security

Published 3 June 2010

Underwater surveillance is one of the more difficult tasks for security personnel; darkness, humidity, murkiness, low temperature all make it difficult for camera equipment to capture clear images of elements in water; a new marine camera with integrated software offers a solution.

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The innovative Lyyn Visual Enhancement Technology and integrated underwater cameras allow harbor and marine security to monitor underwater activity at harbor entrances, near oil rigs, and secure marine locations. It may be argued that had the U.S. Navy possessed such technology at Pearl Harbor, it would have been relatively easy to identify the infiltrating Japanese submarines sooner and sound a general alarm in time to scramble US defenses.

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Robert Aston, the president and founder of Santa Cruz, California-based Ocean Presence Technologies (OPT), incorporated the Lyyn technology into his company’s family of underwater cameras to create enhanced monitoring devices for tropical sea life.
An avid conservationist, Aston has been on a mission to create the MantaCam — a real-time video transmission of the movements of the manta ray, a large, bat-like fish often found in tropical waters. Aston coupled his knowledge of computer hardware and software design with his interest in underwater photography and scuba diving, to create the MantaCam, and a family of continuous underwater video monitoring systems that can be controlled over the Internet.

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“Environmentalists now have the ideal equipment needed to watch the evolution of the world’s oceans and seaways and educate the general public and government officials on the critical need to protect these precious resources,” Aston concluded.

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The Burrard Inlet is a vibrant ecosystem that is surrounded by a busy and heavily populated waterfront. When completed, the Vancouver Convention & Exhibition Centre will be the last piece of a continuous horizontal habitat restoration project stretching from Vancouver Ports to Stanley Park.

Using technology provided by Roper Resources Ltd, the Vancouver Aquarium will use the ROV to conduct yearly surveys of this underwater habitat to measure the re-establishment of marine life in the Burrard Inlet.

Staff, students and volunteers at the Aquarium will be able to review the video data to record species diversity and abundance, as well as make yearly comparisons. This information helps inform scientific research and policy, and also helps us to educate the public about important issues affecting our oceans and consequently, our daily lives.

The video clip is the promotional material Vancouver Aquarium showed at the Oceans 2007 show at the Vancouver Convention & Exhibition Centre. All underwater footage is enhanced with a LYYN T38™.

Visit www.vanaqua.org to read more.

Published courtesy of Vancouver Aquarium,
©2007 Vancouver Aquarium, all rights reserved

LYYN’s Björn Norberg was present together with our reseller Roper Resources to show the LYYN T38™ to a broader audience.

The response was overwhelming.

Besides having several units sold directly we got very positive feedback from both exhibitors and end customers.

One of the most telling comments came from a professional diver that works with a helmet mounted camera: “Seeing one inch longer makes a whole lot of difference…”

Chris Roper (white shirt) marketing SeaBotix LBV (ROV) and LYYN T38™

Note: Underwater Intervention is the combined annual conference of the Association of Diving Contractors International and the ROV Committee of the Marine Technology Society.

Roper Resources will be reselling the LYYN T38™ in North America, to customers in need of a clearer vision.

”We look forward to move a lot of the LYYN systems, both in Canada and in the USA. From the customer response we have high expectations”, says Chris Roper, General Manager at Roper Resources.

”Vision and the possibility to interpret video footage correctly is really important in the offshore market”, said Andreas Ekengren, Managing Director of LYYN. ”Roper Resources represents the best of many worlds for us; a big market with many possible applications for the LYYN VET, and we hear they have great skiing in Canada”. ”This is a significant step for LYYN in our international expansion”.

Roper Resources is a supplier of underwater surveying equipment and tools, with applications in several different fields: Nuclear & Hazardous Environments, Home Land Security, Harbor and Seafloor Survey Equipment. Based on Canada’s west coast, Roper Resources operate all over North America. More information is available at www.roperresources.com

Chris Roper, Roper Resources Ltd, Chris@RoperResources.com