The
October 15, 2008
Below the
By Dana Treen,
The Times-Union
Diving in the
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To give vision below the dark waters and to help guard
The unit, a $421,000 device bought with a homeland security grant, can scan bulkheads or ship hulls, providing a three-dimensional image of what is underwater.
The Jacksonville Sheriff's Office was the first municipal law enforcement
agency in the nation to use the device, said Gus Lugsdin, senior vice president
of Coda Octopus Group, which sold the inspection system it calls Echoscope to
the city. One other department, the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Office in
On board a police boat recently, multihued images flickered on a screen as the boat passed around a bridge. Pilings and bulkheads popped up like stands of trees on the screen, creating a record that can be used for future comparisons. The more passes that are made, the fuller the images become.
"We're still
learning everything this thing can do," said Roy Henderson, chief
for homeland security, organized crime and narcotics for the Sheriff's Office.
"If you get a threat, you can go back and look at it," he said.
In addition to creating a record, the equipment can be used to scan the hulls of cruise ships or other vessels, eliminating the need for a diver's inspection.
In special cases, riverfront venues can be given a quick check ahead of an appearance by a high-profile visitor. In routine police work it can search for evidence or recover victims.
Once recorded, an image can be rotated on the screen, so that a viewer can look from above or below.
The resolution is powerful enough that items the size of a brick are recognizable, Lugsdin said.
"It's like a video game," Lugsdin said. "It's like a video stream but it is using sound."
The system works by flooding an area with sound. The sophisticated sonar system "pings" much the same way submariners locate ships by sending a signal and listening for the bounce-back. The results are three-dimensional color images of whatever is beneath the water.
"You can be on a boat going 4 or 5 knots and it is pinging and sending an image," Lugsdin said. "We can see things from different angles."
To begin mapping work,
The technology now being used in a security capacity has been used in the
past to inspect offshore oil rigs. There also have been military deployments of
the system that were developed at the
Cruise ships and other vessels at such a high-profile event would normally be inspected by divers blindly feeling their way along ship hulls.
Now images of the divers themselves can be picked up by the Echoscope, making it possible for operators to guide them to a destination if necessary.
Using divers can be dark, dangerous and manpower-intensive,
Water in the river can become so dark that a diver pressing his mask against a license plate is still unable to make out letters and numbers, said police dive instructor Scott Watzlawick.
In some places, the water is 70 feet deep with stiff currents. One winter,
Watzlawick dove on a car that had plummeted off the
"The water was 53 degrees," he said.
While
Growth also is coming to the port, where a new terminal set to open in
January could eventually double the number of shipping containers that come
through
"I think the port puts us on the map,"