Virtual Ais Beacons News

Vesper Marine designed its Virtual AIS Beacon in 2010 and installed the first solution in 2011. Developed to address the need to make hazards at sea visible when costly physical infrastructure is not appropriate or is impossible to deploy, the Virtual Aid to Navigation technology that Vesper Marine has created is based on the international standardized AIS, which all large ships must use and many yachts and smaller vessels are now choosing to install due to the safety and collision avoidance benefits it provides.

Vesper Marine announced that it has provided its virtual Automatic Identification System (AIS) to New York Power Authority (NYPA) to protect submerged power cables in Long Island Sound. The WatchMate Asset Protection System is the first U.S. installation of a system combining virtual AIS technology to mark subsea cables in conjunction with highly integrated and advanced software for monitoring vessel traffic patterns whichdirectly alerts vessels to avoid anchor damage to inshore submarine infrastructure assets. The NYPA is the largest state electric utility in the U.S. The first set of cables to be monitored and protected is comprised of four independent, self-contained fluid filled cables buried in the seabed crossing Long Island Sound, providing critical power to Long Island.

Vesper Marine will provide its Virtual Aid to Navigation technology to the French company CGG, a  geoscience company that provides geological and geophysical survey and analysis primarily to the oil and gas industry. In its ongoing quest to map the ocean’s floors, CGG survey vessels tow an array of cables in the water at a up to a 50 ft. depth, an array of cables that contain seismic energy sources, usually a series of airguns that are fired at regular intervals as the vessel moves along predetermined survey lines.

Vesper Marine has been awarded the contract to provide Virtual Automatic Identification System (AIS) Beacons to mark seven reefs hazardous to shipping in the Bay of Plenty, as well as provide a coastal monitoring capability. The beacons will alert ships’ crews and the local government’s Regional Council that a vessel is heading towards a charted danger or entering the no-go zone around each hazard. The contract is in response to the October 5, 2011 events that resulted in the worst environmental disaster in New Zealand’s history…

Vesper Marine, a manufacturer of marine safety products and virtual Aids to Navigation (ATON), announced that its Virtual AIS Beacons are employed in the search for lost Malaysian airliner MH370 in the southern Indian Ocean. The international search team is a closely coordinated effort between United States-based Phoenix International, Dutch engineering company Fugro and the governments of Australia and Malaysia. After an exhaustive period of mapping the ocean floor, the on-the-water search is focused on an area of ocean roughly twice the size of Massachusetts.

Vesper Marine announce successful completion of the demonstration of its Virtual AIS Beacon Technology to a who’s who of California-based professional and port authority organizations. A proven technology currently being used in applications around the globe, the Vesper Virtual AIS Beacon delivers a proactive electronic marker of dangerous visible and invisible hazards such as bridges, piers, rock outcrops, and reefs, as well as any underwater fixed or moving hazards such as sandbars, to provide location information and alert warnings.