Divers Use KCF Smart Tether in Recovery of U.S.S. Westfield

(Galveston, TX)  Beginning November 18th, 2009, the Smart Tether was used with divers working to recover the sunken remains of the U.S.S. Westfield, which was scuttled at the intersection of the Texas City and Houston shipping channels near Galveston, Texas. The project is a joint effort encompassing several organizations including the United States Navy, the United States Army Corps of Engineers, Phoenix International, DonJon Marine Co., PBS&J, and Texas A&M.

The area in which the U.S.S. Westfield sunk is going to be dredged to deepen the shipping lane, so the site is being combed by divers before the dredging operation to recover the remaining artifacts and avoid destroying them. Workers have previously swept the area with a sidescan sonar to establish a search grid for the divers to work within. Because of the extremely poor visibility and strong currents, it is very difficult for divers to navigate underwater, making a positioning system a necessity for topside personnel to be able to direct the divers through the search grid. Archeologists involved in the project are also interested in documenting the exact location of any artifacts discovered. For these reasons, the Smart Tether was an excellent fit for the job, given its versatility and ease of use. KCF personnel were on hand before the beginning of diving operations to train surveyors and divers from Pheonix International on the use of the Smart Tether and supervise the preliminary dives. Phoenix International will continue to use the Smart Tether system for the remainder of the project.

Typically for an operation such as this, an ultra-short baseline acoustic positioning system (USBL) is used to track the position of the diver. Such systems can provide good accuracy under ideal conditions but can be cumbersome to set up and are subject to inaccuracy due to acoustic noise, reflections, and obstructions between the beacon and receivers. The Smart Tether system does not experience these issues since it is a non-acoustic system, and in addition it gives valuable shape and position information about the diver's tether that a USBL systems cannot provide, which can be valuable in avoiding tether entanglements which can be dangerous to the diver. The update rate of the Smart Tether, which is roughly 5 Hz, is also higher than that of a USBL, allowing topside personnel to have true real-time information about the diver's position and heading, making navigation and communication easier and more efficient.

See article in the Galveston County Daily News for more information.