A number of oil company representatives and surveying contractors recently were traveling up and down Loch Ness in the research vessel MY Simrad.
In doing so, they may have been witness to several scientific breakthroughs, although this would not have been their purpose. Neither would they have been in pursuit of the legendary Loch Ness monster - at least not officially.
MV Simrad is normally used by owner Simrad AS of Horten, near Oslo, to demonstrate and develop its range of hydroacoustic and visual surveying equipment. For the last 3 weeks, however, it has been used for Project Urquhart, the first proper scientific study of the biology and hydrography of Loch Ness.
The loch, largest body of fresh water in Britain, was last surveyed in 1903 by Sir John Murray. He used a row boat and a long piece of piano wire and a lead weight, wound up and down by hand with a bicycle wheel.
HIGH TECH APPROACH
Simrad put a little more technical muscle behind Project Urquhart. In the words of David Thomson, managing director of Simrad U.K., Aberdeen, "To this day even the true depth of the loch remains a mystery. Using the latest equipment we shall be able to provide Project Urquhart scientists not only with the true depth, but also with a detailed picture of the loch."
The equipment onboard the vessel included a swathe bathymetry system for seabed mapping, an underwater color television system, differential global positioning, a Boxer remotely operated vehicle, various cameras and sonars, and a subbottom profiling system.
Simrad will make a full 3-D contour map of the loch floor available to scientists when data have been compiled. Sonar was used to assess underwater life to determine the size and living patterns of fish. The arctic char, a relic from the time of glaciers, is one fish under study. Also, the scientists are hoping to find new species of nematode worms and microbes.
"The waters of Loch Ness are deep and pristine," explained Prof. Gwynfryn Jones, director of the Freshwater Biological Association, the project's scientific director. "Although they are peaty and murky, the chemical quality is good. However, such lakes are always under threat from environmental changes."
GAS BUBBLES
Murkiness of the water enables Simrad to show off the cameras developed by its subsidiary Osprey Electronics, also of Aberdeen. Oil industry observers will most likely see gas bubbles rise from the loch floor, but they would have been informed that the source was rotting vegetation rather than anything of greater potential value.
Oceanographic scale drilling may also result from the survey, says Jones, but not for oil. If deep sediment studies show layers below the last glacial clays, it would mean there was a loch there before the last ice age. Scientists will want to drill to know what lived there before the glacier.
Copyright 1992 Oil & Gas Journal. All Rights Reserved.
