Williamson & Associates Complete Seatrials

Williamson & Associates, Inc. of Seattle, Washington has completed construction of a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) designed to obtain 20 meters of rock core in water depths to 6000 meters. This is the second such system designed and built by Williamson & Associates, Inc. for Nichiyu Giken Kogyo Co. Ltd. of Tokyo, Japan; the first, delivered in 1996, is still in operation. Called Benthic Multi-coring Systems (BMS), these drills are operated by the Deep Ocean Resources Development Company, Ltd. for the Japanese Government. Upon completion of local testing and sea trials in July, the new system was shipped to Japan and installed on the research ship Hakurei Maru Number 2. Successful deep water acceptance trials were conducted offshore Japan during September and December, 2005. These trials included rock drilling in water depths of 3400 meters and 5200 meters resulting in 100% core recovery in various substrates. In addition to diamond bit rod coring capability, the new BMS includes 9 video cameras, a scanning sonar system, doppler current meter, attitude sensors, altimeter, precision depth sensor, hydraulic thrusters and an emergency release system. All coring and drill monitoring are controlled topside via a fiberoptic telemetry link. Bit pressure, rotary rpm, rotary torque, flushing water flow/pressure, selection of specific drill bits and coring rate are among the operator controlled functions.