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Novel transducer impact case study
Novel transducer
Improved profiling of the ocean floor leads to export success story
A New Zealand company identified a gap in the market and, working with IRL, they are developing new and competitive products to fill it.
Industry need
In the early 2000s, Electronic Navigation Limited (ENL) identified a gap in the market for a seafloor mapping system that would deliver much greater clarity for commercial fishermen. Existing tools were unsatisfactory with fishermen frequently running the risk of missing a big chunk of their potential haul because they couldn’t gauge if they were at the edge or the centre of a school of fish. ENL saw potential to sell into a niche worldwide market if it could develop an easy-to-use product that would present clear information to an onboard monitor in real time.
IRL innovation
ENL began working on the project with Industrial Research Limited (IRL). The company’s confidence in IRL resulted from an earlier, successful collaboration to develop a wide-scan sonar. ENL Managing Director Neil Anderson says that project ‘transformed ENL from an importer and reseller of offshore technology to a New Zealand developer and exporter of in-house technology.”
WASSP depicts a 3D profile of a channel in the seafloor.
The mapping system project resulted in a product known as WASSP – Wide Angle Sonar Seafloor Profiler. Its key features include a 120 degree sonar view of the water column, the ability to profile the seafloor and show where schools of fish are, and where changes in seafloor hardness occur.
IRL engineers produced the prototype hardware design that is the basis of the WASSP system. IRL also played a crucial role in providing acoustic expertise for the development of the transducers. The transducer is a vital link for transmitting a signal below the sea surface and receiving echoes from the fish and the bottom of the sea.
WASSP retails in New Zealand for about $30,000 and is unique in the marketplace because of the clear and dynamic way it presents information and its affordability. In Europe the product sells for €20,000.
Economic benefits
The WASSP system has won ENL international recognition and generated export revenues of more than $2 million since its launch in 2006.
Although developed initially for commercial fishing, WASSP has gone on to have a multitude of other applications including seafloor profiling and bathymetric survey duties, sports-fishing and use aboard super yachts to aid inshore navigation. It has been used as a navigation tool on China’s many inland canals and has helped the Canadian Fisheries Department profile lobster-fishing grounds as part of a fisheries management programme.
Other overseas markets for the product include The Netherlands, Iceland, the United Kingdom, the United States, Norway, France and Italy.
The company is planning that its Commercial Fishing, Super Yachts, and Marine Application sectors will each represent about 1/3 of the companies revenue in the future.
The benefits of the IRL/ENL collaboration flow through the economy as ENL spends around 40-50 per cent of the costs of manufacturing its sonar system with sub-contracting New Zealand companies.
Future work
Ongoing benefits will be delivered by ongoing ENL/IRL research into sonar and navigational aids, with knowledge and technologies being transferred into new products that are predicted to significantly increase ENL’s annual product revenue from today’s $2 million per annum rate.