The new way to survey – how uncrewed vessels could help map the world's seafloor

With some highly ambitious seabed mapping projects underway, it may be time to look more seriously at what uncrewed vessels have to offer in this sector, and what this means for seafaring jobs. Sarah Robinson reports

In 2007, a UK Marine Accident Investigation Branch report on a grounding off the Orkney islands revealed that some sea areas had not been properly surveyed for depth for more than 160 years.

Nautilus wrote to the UK shipping minister Jim Fitzpatrick warning of the risks posed by increasingly larger ships operating in sea areas not charted to modern standards, and also raised the concern that government funding for the civil hydrography programme had not been increased for 25 years. The minister promised a review of funding levels and an initiative to ensure that more hydrographic data, of a higher quality, could be gathered for the same costs.

Several governments have come and gone since then, but the daunting task of producing new seabed surveys for the whole of the nation's waters continues. 'Unfortunately, the UK still probably has some of the worst-mapped coastal waters in the world,' says Nautilus professional and technical officer David Appleton. 'It was disappointing that the government decided to get rid of its state-operated ETVs [emergency towing vessels] when these could have been used for surveying when not involved in maritime incidents, but the trend has been towards reliance on commercial operators in many respects.'

For UK seabed surveying, a collaborative approach is now favoured for the UK Civil Hydrography Programme (see panel 1). The Maritime & Coastguard Agency – a government body – identifies the sea areas in most need of surveying each year, and commercial contractors are hired to carry out the work.

'We're offering highly-skilled seafaring jobs where people can go home at the end of the day and may not need to work unsociable hours,' says Mr Skett. 'We want people who are familiar with the rules of navigation and keeping a watch, and then we provide training on how operate a vessel remotely.

'It's definitely alien at first. You have to train yourself to act on different sources of situational awareness. You can't just look out of the window; radar is more important and there's lots of electronic data. Sometimes our onboard AI [artificial intelligence] tells you about problems and suggests a course of action, and then you make a judgement.'

There have been some concerns in the wider industry about the potential dangers of autonomous vessels to other shipping – even those USVs which are remotely operated – but SEA-KIT insists it works to the highest standards.

'We were led by the regulations in the development of our procedural and compliance practices,' notes Mr Skett – and indeed, the first ever Unmanned Marine Systems certificate was awarded to SEA-KIT by classification society Lloyd’s Register in July this year.

Elaborating on the company's safety measures, he adds: 'A crewed guard vessel accompanies our USVs in busy lanes and out of the port. Also, our vessels are built with the same equipment in two halves, and can continue if one side of the hull is damaged.

'There are no national or international training standards yet in place for what our operators do, but we hope the authorities will take note of what we are doing and put something in place. It is important that the industry as a whole remains vigilant and has a thorough approach to USV training and testing, as one incident could present a significant setback for all developers.'

Arguably, the main concerns surrounding uncrewed vessels relate to genuinely autonomous vessels: those which would operate themselves entirely using AI. It's easy to imagine why these vessels may never be welcome in busy shipping lanes, but for survey vessels painstakingly examining remote patches of the ocean, it could make sense to let the computers take over. As well as helping to complete Seabed 2030, this may be the only way to find the still-missing plane from Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

Having already started to use AI to assist the remote operators of its USVs, SEA-KIT is well placed to attempt this next step. 'To make a Colregs-compliant fully autonomous vessel is a massive challenge, but we'd like to be the first to achieve it.'

Meanwhile, there are three British remote-controlled survey vessels out there which could surely help the UK with its relentless seafloor mapping challenge, so is SEA-KIT ready and willing? 'Conversations are being held,' smiles Ashley Skett. 'We'll see how it goes.'