Trackpoint II Helps NOAA and HBOI to Explore USS "Monitor" Marine Sanctuary

During the Summer of 2001, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) made several dives in the Monitor Marine Sanctuary located 16 miles south southeast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina (http://monitor.nos.noaa.gov/). Supporting these dives was the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute (HBOI) of Ft. Pierce Florida (http://www.hboi.edu). HBOI provided the research vessel Seward Johnson II and the multi-person submersibles Clelia and Johnson Sea-Link equipped with ORE Trackpoint II Ultra Short Baseline (USBL) Positioning and Tracking Sonar.

The USS Monitor was a groundbreaking vessel in the archives of naval history as it was the first vessel to be designed and built as a turreted warship. On March 9, 1862, the

Monitor battled the ironclad wooden hull vessel CSS Virginia (ex-USS Merrimack) off of Hampton Roads, Virginia. During the four-hour battle, the Monitor successfully protected the Union fleet operating in the Hampton Roads area. Ten months later, the Monitor met her demise, during a severe storm, while being towed to North Carolina. Despite valiant efforts by the crew, the Monitor sunk on New Year’s Eve 1962 off of Cape Hatteras.

During the NOAA dive operations aboard the Johnson Sea-Link, the ORE Trackpoint II system was used to help verify the actual geodetic position and orientation of the Monitor. This was accomplished by placing an ORE 4350B transponder at several locations on the Monitor wreck site. Then, while the Johnson Sea-Link was working on, or near, the wreck site, the transponder’s position was recorded along with the position and depth of the Johnson Sea-Link. A proprietary calibration routine, developed by Creative Underwater Technologies, was then used to calculate the mean position of the transponders at the different locations on the wreck site. These surveyed positions then allowed the actual geodetic position and orientation (heading) to be determined. This method of determining the Monitor’s position during Johnson Sea-Link dives, proved to be a very cost-effective and time saving method and maximized the use of the submersible during the mission.

Submersible tracking and data management station onboard the R/V Seward Johnson II. The ORE Trackpoint II Plus USBL is located at the top of the central equipment rack.

December 10, 2001