Salvage and Wrecks

Services to Salvage Companies and Wreck Investigators

Photo © OSSeas Ltd

Micro ROV Services can provide ROV services to marine insurance investigators, salvage companies and even the recreational wreck hunter.

We can help you to:

• Reduce safety exposure
• Obtain video to understand the status of a wreck
• Locate leaks of oil, fuel or hazardous materials
• Provide information for salvage planning
• Significantly reduce costs
• Provide full detailed video documentation
• Gain information in restricted access areas in or under a wreck

Wrecked trawler in ice
Photo © OSSeas Ltd

Yacht wreck

Before a salvage or investigation of a wreck is undertaken by Divers it is practical and prudent to know what the divers are stepping in to. It has been proved time and again that the best route to take is to conduct a visual survey using the ROV first. Micro ROV Services can provide this service because being so small the ROV can squeeze in to places a diver can't, get right inside a holed vessel and show the source of such things as oil leaks, or where the wreck has been weakened to assist salvage planning.

On a Gulf of Mexico platform, toppled into the sea by a hurricane and leaking oil, weeks of time and hundreds of thousands of dollars were saved because VideoRay could get inside and identify exactly where the oil was coming from. It enable engineers to define the best approach and be ready with a cap of the right size before any underwater operations took place.

On a grounded cruise ship, Videoray squeezed under the hull and enabled the salvage team to see that the ship was not on a sandy bottom as first thought, but had been holed by a large boulder. The video footage from the ROV showed that the original flotation plan could be catastrophic. The team immediately worked out a new refloating plan, which was ultimately successful.

During the process of investigating the hull, the VideoRay was tossed about “as if we were in a washing machine on the super spin cycle” according to the USCG operating team. This was due to the swift currents – over 4 knots at times – in the very tight space under the hull.

Captain Patrick G. Garrity, Commanding Officer of Sector Portland, included “The underwater video provided by the USCG team proved very helpful in planning the salvage operation.”

Whether you are a professional treasure hunter or a recreational diver that loves exploring, make sure you have located your target before you don your gear to investigate your find, saving dive time and reducing risks.

Micro ROV Services can quickly check any find within air dive range to ensure you are in the right place before you dive, then it can stay down with you, providing a safety watch, or illumination of your find.

It can also go into those inaccessible places and see what’s there so you can properly plan equipment requirements to gain access.

The Videoray Micro ROV

Weighing in at only 4.8 kgs (10.6 lbs) and being only 36 cm (14.2") long and 27 cm (11") wide the Pro-4 is small, light and easily deployed. In fact it is literally "throw it in the water. At only 21cm (8.5") high it can fit easily into most submerged pipelines, intakes or outfalls and spaces which are unreachable by a diver.

Small but powerful the Videoray Pro-4 can travel at 4.2 knots, see with the high resolution TV quality camera under the bright illumination of two Halogen lights. If the water is murky, there is the Blue View sonar sweeping the area and showing in sharp relief what’s ahead.

Found something? if it's small enough the manipulator can pick it up, if not the smart tether allows us to position it for later recovery by divers.

Want to measure or test something? the range of accessories allows on the spot testing of cathodic protection, determine metal thickness, detect radiation, sample water quality, and take measurements with a laser.

The ROV is a boon to the underwater world – for photographers, scientists, environmentalists, search and rescue, law enforcement, customs and excise, dam inspections, tank inspections, commercial and offshore oil and gas installation and monitoring, fisheries, recreational divers, hull inspections for yachties and commercial shipping, inspection of wharves, piers, moorings and harbour facilities and many more uses which are being discovered daily.