Measurement of Depth

Echo Sounder (fathometer) Hand lead line

 Early sailors needed to know ocean depths, particularly along coastlines and near harbors, so that their ships would not run aground. Ocean depths were measured with a weight on a line, and depth measurements were limited to shallow water by the lengths of line carried on board and the enthusiasm of the captain for making soundings. Not until the 1870s, during the famous Challenger Expedition, were deep soundings routinely made. But the technique was the same: laboriously lowering a weight on a rope and trying to figure out when it hit bottom. This technique was arduous in deep water, and the results were seldom accurate for two reasons: Strong currents might pull the rope and weight to the side, and the length of rope needed to reach the deep seafloor was so heavy, it was difficult to tell when the weight hit the bottom.

An echo-sounder sends an acoustic pulse directly downwards to the seabed and records the returned echo. The sound pulse is generated by a transducer that emits an acoustic pulse and then listens for the return signal. The time for the signal to return is recorded and converted to a depth measurement by calculating the speed of sound in water. As the speed of sound in water is around 1,500 meters/second, the time interval, measured in milliseconds, between the pulse being transmitted and the echo being received, allows bottom depth and targets to be measured.

Echo sounder

 Single-beam bathymetry systems are generally configured with a transceiver (transducer/receiver) mounted to the hull, These systems measure the water depth directly beneath the vessel. The hull-mounted transceiver transmits a high-frequency acoustic pulse in a beam directly downward into the water column. Acoustic energy is reflected off the sea floor beneath the vessel and received at the transceiver. The transceiver contains a transmitter, which controls pulse length and provides electrical power at a given frequency. This transmit-receive cycle repeats at a fast rate, on the order of milliseconds. The continuous recording of water depth below the vessel yields high-resolution depth measurements .

Advanced echo sounders

Graph of echo sounder

Importance of using the makers manuals

 An echo sounder has following components:

Transducer - to generate the sound vibrations and also receive the reflected sound. Pulse generator - to produce electrical oscillations for the transmitting transducer. Amplifier - to amplify the weak electrical oscillations that has been generated by the receiving transducer on reception of the reflected sound vibration. Recorder - for measuring and indicating depth.

c o n t r o l s

Range Switch - to select the range between which the depth is be measured. Typical ranges are 0 - 50 metres, 1 - 100 metres, 100 - 200 metres etc. Always check the lowest range first before shifting to a higher range. Unit selector switch - to select the unit feet, fathoms or metres as required. Gain switch - to be adjusted so that the clearest echo line is recorded on the paper. Paper speed control - to select the speed of the paper - usually two speeds available.

c Zero Adjustment or Draught setting control - the echo sounder will normally display the depth below the keel. o This switch can be used to feed the ship's draught so n that the echo sounder will display the total sea depth. t This switch is also used to adjust the start of the r transmission of the sound pulse to be in line with the o zero of the scale in use. l Fix or event marker - this button is used to draw a line s on the paper as a mark to indicate certain time such as when passing a navigational mark in association with a position plotted on the chart. Transducer changeover switch - used in case the ship has more than one transducer. Such as one forward and one aft . Dimmer - to illuminate the display as required.

Errors and Uncertainty

All measurements have some error associated with them, and depth measurements are no exception. The errors in depth are grouped into two general types, fixed and variable. Fixed errors are those that are the same no matter how deep the water may be. For example, if the tidal datum is determined incorrectly, the error introduced will be fixed at a constant value independent of water depth. Every sounding taken will include that same error. Variable errors, on the other hand, are different for every sounding, growing larger with increasing water depths. The uncertainty of every sounding then, comes from a combination of its fixed and variable errors. How do they combine?

 Velocity Error - an increase in temperature and salinity of water increases the velocity of sound in water thus giving rise to an error in the depth displayed. Aeration - the presence of air bubbles below the transducer gives rise to false echoes. Air bubbles are normally caused when a ship goes astern, turbulence when rudder is put hard over or due to pitching when ship is in light condition. Multiple echoes - this is caused in shallow waters typically with a rocky bottom due to some of the sound pulses reflecting up and down between the ship's keel and the sea bottom before being recorded on the display. The first echo is the correct reading.

 False echoes - in deep waters, by the time the sound pulse returns from the bottom, the stylus may have already finished more than one revolution and thus the echo recorded will be a false one and the depth indicated will be much lower than the actual depth. Pythagoras Error - if the vessel has one transducer for transmitting and one transducer for receiving separated by some distance, the distance traveled by the pulse will be greater than the depth of the sea bed. This error can be important in shallow water but no so in deep water.

The effect of sound speed

Echo sounders measure time and you thought all along that they measured depth? They measure the time between transmitting and receiving an echo, and they calculate depth by dividing the time in half and multiplying it by the speed of sound. Clearly, how accurately the speed of sound is known will affect the accuracy of the depth measurement. In shallow water, standard practice is to either perform a bar check periodically, which avoids having to determine the actual speed, or determine sound speed in the water with a velocimeter, from which soundings are corrected to true depths using the values it measured. In deep water beyond the depths where a velocity meter can be readily deployed, normal practice is to set the echo sounder to a fixed sound speed (1483 or 1500ms-1) and correct the depths it measures using tables (Carter, 1980). Under stable water conditions, these tables produce data that are consistent and uniform, although there are minor steps at the boundaries of each correction area.

The discussion of sound speed deliberately oversimplifies the sound in the water as if it were a single ray, to make the geometry easier. Although this is useful, it is not what happens to real sound in real water. In the sea, sound emitted propagates away from the face of the transducer in a pattern that expands and resembles a lighthouse beam on a dark night. To describe the beam in something that can be handled with fairly simple arithmetic, and to reflect the fact that usually it is the strongest central part of the beam that does most of the work, sonar design engineers use the concept of beam width to rate sounders. Beam width is twice the angle between a line perpendicular to the centre of the transducer face and the point where the energy contained in the beam is reduced to half that at the perpendicular. Of course, there is energy outside the beam, and all readers will have seen returns from it on occasion, but most of the energy put out, and consequently returned (and more importantly, the first returned energy), comes from inside the beam width.

The effect of beam width

m a i n t e n a n c e

Always comply with the maintenance instructions given in the manual. Normally it is just a monthly cleaning of carbon or dirt deposits from the inside of the recorder. Keep a stock of at least 1 spare stylus and 3 months supply of recording paper. Compare the soundings obtained with the soundings given in the chart. Maintain a log to enter the soundings obtained. Some echo sounders have an alarm to alert the navigator when the sounding goes below the set sounding.

QUESTIONS
What is the make of echo sounder you have on chart room? Briefly describe its operation along with a block diagram. 2. How do you change the paper on the echo sounder? What care and maintenance will you do to keep the equipment in good working condition?