PHOTO COURTESY OF UH SOEST The Kilo Moana, a new ocean research vessel assigned to the University of Hawaii, has two multibeam swath mapping systems for shallow and deep water.

UH gets high-tech
research ship

The vessel can map
the ocean floor with a
new level of efficiency
and sonar precision

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By Helen Altonn
haltonn@starbulletin.com

The nation's newest and most unique ocean research vessel will arrive tomorrow at its home base at Snug Harbor in Kapalama after showing off its stuff en route here from Florida.

The $45 million Kilo Moana was built for the Navy in Jacksonville, Fla., and assigned to the University of Hawaii as part of the University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System. Its name in Hawaiian means "oceanographer," or "one who is looking for understanding of the deep sea."

Unlike any other ship in the Navy's university fleet, Kilo Moana is a SWATH (small water-plane area twin hull) vessel designed to provide a stable platform for scientific work.

"It's great, a wonderful ride," UH geologist-geophysicist Brian Taylor. And the array of new systems aboard the ship "performed real well," he said. "It's got wonderful sonar, very accurate, a delight to work with."

Many ship systems had to be checked out, as well as a whole series of acoustic sonar systems that had to be calibrated and tested in shallow and deep water, he said.

Aboard were 20 crew members, 10 UH scientists and technicians, and 17 representatives of Navy agencies, vendors of the equipment and other people checking everything out, Taylor said.

The ship has two multibeam swath mapping systems for shallow and deep water.

In deeper water, Taylor said, "You can easily space tracks 10 miles apart and still get full coverage of the sea floor. ... This system is good from, say, 200 meters (660 feet) down to as deep as it gets.

"We can go visually from very shallow to as deep as it gets with high resolution."

Testing the system at the Dry Tortugas, islands west of Key West, he said, "We were looking at eight inches in 200 feet of water. We can resolve things at that level."

Technicians aboard also have been getting science systems and measuring tools operating, including a science information system, Taylor said. Data can be seen all over the ship via a fiber-optic network with computers, cameras and videos, he said.

Taylor pointed to three major things on the new ship that were lacking on the Moana Wave, which the UH used for oceanographic work for 25 years.

The Navy removed it from the fleet about four years ago, leaving the Ka'imikai-O-Kanaloa, mother ship for the Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory, as the only vessel available here for ocean work.

The Moana Wave did not have dynamic positioning -- controls to remain stationary -- or multibeam swath capability, both of which Kilo Moana has, Taylor said.

He said the two very accurate multibeam sonars permit "sea floor mapping in a way we could not before, and that's going to be real important for us in Hawaii because lots of areas around our islands, especially up in the northwestern chain, are quite unexplored.

"We will set about systematically covering that for the state as we can in various operations to provide a base map of our own for the Economic Exclusive Zone."

He said scientists will be able to clearly map and sample former shorelines and submerged coral reefs and terraces around the islands to gain an understanding of sea level over time and how it relates to climate change and other issues.

Kilo Moana also has more lab space and instrumentation and can take 30 scientists, which many large biochemical and oceanographic programs require, Taylor said. The Moana Wave was limited to 20 scientists.

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Hawaii Undersea Research Lab