What’s New in Sonar

By Paul Molyneaux

Seapix can display the boat, the bottom and the targeted catch in real time, providing skippers with much of the information they need to make quick decisions.

About 10 years ago, iXblue — a French tech company headquartered on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea — identi ed sheries as a potential market and began asking shermen what they wanted in a sonar.

“We found that shermen want two things,” says Christophe Corbières, Fishery sales developer at iXblue. “They want to know the volume of the target shoal, and they want to be able to discriminate species.”

To that end, iXblue designed the Seapix sonar system, a pricey but top of the line tool for shermen who want to have a good idea what they’re setting their nets on. The system begins with a Mills Cross transducer with 256 beams on each axis.

“It looks ahead and the side 120 degrees,” says Corbières. “We are using the same transducer geometry that astronomers use to listen to deep space, adapted for the sea.” iXblue made the transducer 48 centimeters in diameter, so it could

A full bag aboard the Alaska Victory. Seapix helps skippers know what’s going to be in the net before they set it.

Seapix display shows vessel track in relation to observed sh concentrations, in yellow. The graph alongside shows the predicted composition of the targeted sh concentration.

t the housing size of comparable transducers.

“We made it very compact,” says Corbières. “We also shortened the distance between transducer elements and the analog to digital converter.” According to Corbières, shortening that distance is what helps reduce noise and create a clearer image.

“There are a total of 512 beams,” he says. “If you can imagine a pyramid of signal, at a depth of 100 meters, each side of the base of that pyramid would be 370 meters. That is a tremendous quantity of data that we recover every 5 seconds.” In addition to quantity, Corbières notes that the quality of the data is also a priority. And when it comes to discriminating the size and species of at sh, that’s a problem Seapix is hoping to solve.

“Right now, there is huge demand for this. Flat sh is complicated. We have vertical resolution of 7 centimeters,” he says, noting that skippers tune the system to their particular sheries, learn to read the information Seapix provides, and ll in the gaps based on experience.

“In the future, we will divide that resolution in half. We will have 3.5 centimeters of vertical resolution. That will help with at sh, and our customers are asking for that. In 160 fathoms, Seapix is transmitting at 150 kilohertz.” In order to attain high resolution at depth, Corbières notes, requires 20 times the equivalent energy of a low-frequency sonar. “We are concentrating that energy into very narrow beams that are 1.5 degrees.”

In 2016 and 2018, Corbières spent weeks in the Bering Sea aboard a number of di erent trawlers, most of which were shing for Paci c ocean perch, Atka mackerel and cod. These are sheries that can utilize Seapix capacity to be steered to within 30 degrees of the surface, and where Seapix appears to be paying o , for now.

“I spent three weeks on the Alaska Victory,” he says. “I spent a week on the Evie Grace, out of Kodiak, a week on the Northern Patriot, and four days on the Golden Alaska.” The point to the

Acouple of new transducers from Furuno have found traction with shermen looking for more precise target species identi cation and 3-D sounder mapping.

Matt Wood, Furuno’s national sales manager, said while his company’s recent progress has been held up by the pandemic, Furuno has managed to add to the Furuno transducers cover 3-D number of transducers they sounders and CHIRP sh nders from a single unit. are producing, with the most growth coming from 3-D transducers. In particular, he pointed to two new high-performance, pocket mount combination transducers in the 3-D market, the 165T/265LH-PM488 and the 165T/275LHW.

“By combination, we mean these transducers feed the multibeam sounder for the DFF-3-D but then it also provide the low/high CHIRP frequencies for our CHIRP Fish nder. That’s the CHIRP Fish nder that’s built into our TZT3 multifunction display and is available in our network sounder for the earlier models as well,” Wood said.

Wood said boats in the 30- to 60-foot range are taking an interest in the 165T/265LH-PM488 transducer.

“We have de nitely seen some of the Delta-style boats up in Alaska start gravitating in this direction. CHIRP sh nding has kind of taken the world by storm pretty much everywhere, and we’re seeing it in just about any kind of commercial shing,” Wood said.

The CHIRP sh nders are especially popular in sheries where precise target discrimination is important. The other transducer, the 165T/275LHW, is a larger pocket mount unit with a wider beam angle, allowing for even better species target identi cation.

The wider beam makes the sh targets distinguishable, while the transducer’s low-end frequency allows for users to see deep, and the high frequency shows the top of the water column.

Wood said that the pocket transducer model has been especially appealing for the berglass boat market because the transducer is installed in a pocket that sits inside glass hulls.

“They really become integral to the hull. They have proven very popular in go-fast center-console boats, especially in stepped hulls where you really can’t have a transducer aft of the step. This is an opportunity for guys to have really good sh nder coverage on the CHIRP side but also getting mapping performance in excess of 30 knots. So it’s both a multipurpose and a special purpose transducer,” Wood said. — Brian Hagenbuch

A comparison of how much Atka mackerel Seapix predicted would be caught (blue line) and what was actually caught on the 2018 Alaska Victory trip. trips was to ground-truth what Seapix was seeing and what skippers were landing.

“The results were good,” says Corbières. “The true catch was 85 percent of what Seapix predicted for Atka mackerel, 90 percent for cod, and 95 percent for POP.” Corbières

Simrad has expanded its array of shing- nding omni-sonar devices with the Simrad SY50, a new, smaller device that will bring traditional big-boat sonar features to smaller coastal shing vessels.

Much like its larger predecessors, the compact SY50 has 256 channels for receiving and transmitting, Simrad brings big boat sonar to smaller vessels. including single-ping and FM transmission and a sensor for pitch and roll compensation. A frequency range of 54 to 60 kHz, adjustable at 0.5kHz, allows for surveying as deep as 2,000 meters, while omnidirectional sonar beams sweep the water from plus-10 degrees to minus 60 degrees around the vessel.

According to Mads Diedrik Dahl, the vice president of shery sales for Kongsberg Maritime, which owns Simrad, all this comes at a price point that is viable for smaller operations.

“It’s very satisfying for us to offer such high-end functionality on such a compact sonar, and at such an affordable price,” Dahl said.

And it is not just the affordability that makes it an option for smaller vessels. The compact unit also ts on boats with limited space. Simrad shrunk the sonar down by packing all the transceiver electronics into the transducer, eliminating the need for a cabinet dedicated to transceivers.

This is not just a space saver; it also cuts back on static from the sonar and makes for easier installation. Installation is further simpli ed with a single Ethernet cable that strings together the small operating panel on the bridge with the computer, hull unit, and power source.

The unit can be run on DC power, another reason it is viable for smaller boats that often do not have three-phase power systems.

No fan and no moving parts makes the computer uniquely suited to the marine environment, and the sonar runs Simrad’s proven, easy-to-process Winson software, which is available in nearly 20 languages.

“We wanted to issue a product that would provide new possibilities for budget-conscious crew on shing vessels who have traditionally tended to miss out on more sophisticated sonar features, and with the SY50, we think we’ve achieved that goal,” Dahl said.

Simrad

— Brian Hagenbuch notes that they also connected to the Marport net sensors and trawl camera, and saw that some species were better at avoiding the net, which he believes might explain some of the discrepancy between what Seapix saw and what was landed.

Corbières is also selling the system to purse seiners that can use a double or triple transducer installation mounted looking forward and sideways so as to scan from the surface to bottom and 120 degrees from the bow.

Je Barnett is one of the skippers of the 225-foot freezer trawler Alaska Victory, owned by Ocean Peace, and he took Corbières out to the Aleutians in 2018.

“There were about ve days there where all we could do was jog. We were outside and had no protection.” When the wind died down, though, Barnett and Corbières got to tuning the Seapix system.

“When it comes to round sh, the mackerel and POP, that’s when it really works,” says Barnett. “There’s a lot of times there’ll be a lot of plankton in the water, and it’ll show up like sh. My mate and I will be thinking we’ll have a full bag in an hour, then we bring it aboard and there’s nothing there. It’ll show up like that on the Furuno and the Seapix, but the Seapix has a graph along the side that will tell you if it’s all garbage.”

That’s the key aspect of the Seapix system, according to Barnett. He has a boat to ll with sh, and Seapix helps him make the best use

Atka mackerel and Paci c ocean perch tumble onto a conveyor below deck on the Alaska Victory.

of his time instead of wasting it chasing plankton.

“It’s the same with pollock. We sh pollock sometimes, and the Seapix will tell you what size they are, at least keep you from setting on peewees. Those sh come aboard, you’ve got to take them.”

On his last trip, Barnett found the system wasn’t working.

“I called Chris [Corbières], and we did all the tests and found the system was running on demo mode because the whole transducer was gone.”

Barnett points out that communications technology has changed the service environment.

“I might not even need to go in,” he says. “Sometimes I can contact Chris by Whatsapp and solve the problem. I can show him what I’m seeing, and he can tell me what’s going on.”

Ocean Peace appears to be sold on Seapix, having put it on other boats in its eet. Barnett notes that the Alaska Victory will be getting the latest version, one that can spot at sh.

“It’s supposed to be good for at sh, I’m hoping they’ll show up on it,” he says.

At $100,000 for a single transducer system, plus installation, not everyone is jumping on the Seapix bandwagon.

“As far as I know, we are the only factory trawlers using

Alaska Victory Captain Jeff Barnett observes multiple Seapix screens and uses his growing familiarity with the technology to make a decision about whether to set his net or move on. Seapix,” says Barnett. The French company is still the new kid on the block, 10 years in.

Paul Molyneaux is the Boats & Gear editor for National Fisherman and author of “The Doryman’s Refl ection.”

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Ocean Peace photos

By Paul Molyneaux

hen a shing company needs more catching capacity, there are generally two choices: build a new boat or sponson one of your old ones. But the number of decommissioned supply boats from the Gulf of Mexico oil industry has expanded a third option: convert an OSV into a shing boat. Ocean Peace chose option three and sent the rst Amendment 80 catcher boat to Alaska in August 2021.

Steve Becker, port engineer and project manager for Ocean Peace, a Seattle based shing company operating primarily in Alaska’s Bering Sea, went down to the Gulf Coast in the spring of 2019 looking for a vessel of around 250 feet to convert a big oil supply boat into another catcher-processor.

“When I got down there, I noticed all these 150-footers, and I called our CEO, Mike Farris, and said, ‘Hey, there’s a lot of smaller boats down here that could make good catcher vessels,’” Becker says.

Farris gave him the green light to nd a smaller boat, and on May 25, 2019, Becker was making the passage through the Panama Canal aboard the Wes Bordelon, a 131-foot o shore supply vessel built at Bollinger Shipyard in Lockport, La., in 2001.

“Of all the boats we looked at, she was the cleanest and best kept up,” says Becker. “So many times, they just haul them out and leave them. And they go to downhill pretty quick.”

One of the mates from another Ocean Peace vessel came to help make the passage and was less than impressed with Becker’s choice.

“He got looking around and started making comments. He said, ‘Steve, we got to do something about the bow.’ And he didn’t like the wheelhouse — it was quarter-inch steel with 36-inch framing and big windows. He said the rst big sea would just sweep it away. I said, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll make a boat out of her.’”

The Wes Bordelon reached Seattle in early June 2019, and the work began.

“We hauled her out at North Lake Shipyard,” says Becker. “We added about 10 feet to the stern. The propellers were close to the stern, and I thought it would

The Bering Hope charges through northern seas with a new bow con guration and power package.

just be a matter of time before one of the trawl doors got in there. We also needed it so we could get a stern ramp in there.”

At North Lake the Wes Bordelon also lost its unimpressive bow, as well as its name. Mark Siberg, a lofter, helped Becker create a higher bow that also included a Schottel thruster.

“It’s all mathematical when it comes to predicting what a material will do as it travels through space,” says Siberg, owner of a Argonaut Marine, the company through which he has been providing lofting support to the boatbuilding industry “for a long time.” Siberg uses and has developed software to do lofting for various projects.

“Usually, I listen to what the owner is trying to accomplish and try to help them get there. In this case they wanted to keep the pilothouse dry. So the question was, how we could extend the bow without making it really obvious that it was a bow extension?” Siberg said. He started by measuring the boat.

“Then we worked out a hull form to carry those lines up without a visible knuckle or unfairness in order to give them the bow that they were hoping for.”

As far as Becker is concerned, it worked. “It does exactly what we hoped it would,” he says. “Sends the water out away from the wheelhouse.”

While hauled out, Becker also oversaw installation of new kort nozzles and deflector rudders.

One feature that concerned the Ocean Peace team was the Wes Bordelon’s low, short bow that left a lightly constructed wheelhouse vulnerable to big waves.

With lofting help from Mark Siberg and Redline Welding, the Bering Hope headed to Alaska with a bow that could keep the wheelhouse safe and dry.

Home port: Dutch Harbor, Alaska Owner: Ocean Peace Inc.

Builder: Bollinger Shipyard, Amelia, La.; Converted by Ocean Peace in Seattle Hull material: Steel

Year built: 2001

Fishery: Amendment 80/Yellowfin Sole Length: 156’ 2” Beam: 36’

Draft: 11’6” Engine: Cummins KTA38-M1 Generator: 2 99-kW Cummins 6CTAs

Bow thruster: Schottel STT1 10LK/ Cummins M1 4TA

Power train: Twin Disc MG5301DC 4.96/1; Shaft 6” x 310” AQ22HS; Prop 72” x 53” Kaplan-style, four-blade, stainless

Hydraulics: 1,200 gallons, 4 pumps, 136 GPM, Cummins QSK19 for power Fuel capacity: 79,700 gallons Speed: top 13 knots; cruising 11 knots Hold capacity: None Crew accommodations: 10

Electronics: Furuno radars, Seapix fish finder, Simrad sonar, Marport net monitors, Olex, Maverick satellite system Deck Gear: Rapp split winches, Rapp net reels, a range of Pullmaster winches, and SOW winches

“We got the deflector rudders from Lowell Stambaugh,” says Becker. “And we had an electrolysis problem with the shafts so we had new ones made at Sound Propeller here in Seattle. They’re Aquamet-19, 307-inch, 6 inches in diameter.”

At the yard they also put in a new stern shoe bearings and did the alignment on the shafts. “We kept the original engines,” says Becker. “Those are Cummins KTA 38s. They were 800 horsepower, but we had them rebuilt to 1,000.”

The KTA 38s are turbocharged, 38 liter, V-12s. Built in England, they can be fitted with mechanical or electric fuel injectors. While rated as Tier I engines, because they were original, they escaped Tier IV requirements for engines over 815 horsepower.

In addition, Ocean Peace installed a new Cummins QSK19 to run the hydraulics. “It’s got two 6 CTA Cummins generators,” says Becker. The inline 6-cylinder, 8.3 liter QSK19, can be set up to generate anywhere between 224 and 321 kilowatts.

According to Becker, they put the boat back in the water and Sean Testa, of Jensen Maritime conducted a preliminary stability test on the boat. “We were planning on adding a lot of steel above the waterline,” says Becker. “We wanted to make sure she could take it.”

Mark Siberg helped again with lofting a new shelterdeck and wheelhouse. “I got more involved in the concept phase than I normally do,” says Siberg. “But it worked out. Lofting a wheelhouse is different than when you have all those materials in motion. It’s simpler.”

Ocean Peace had the topside work done at Western Towboat Co., and Northern Pioneer Dock, with most of the work done at the Northern Pioneer Dock, just across the canal from the Fishermen’s Terminal.

One of the first challenges Becker faced in converting what he refers to as a Caribbean mud boat, into a commercial fishing boat is the vessels low freeboard. “Because she’s classed we had to pay attention to how much water could be on deck. So, one of the things we had to was put flappers on the scuppers, so they would let water out, but not let water back in.” In addition, Becker notes, they added a fiberglass grate 18 inches above the main deck. “We wanted to dry it up for the crew,” says Becker. “We didn’t want them sloshing around in a lot of water.”

Having taken off the wheelhouse and the old bulwarks along the extensive deck, the Ocean Peace crew started putting on steel.

“Our crew averaged about eight to 10 guys,” says Becker. “This was a fill-in project, for when people didn’t have other things to do. If we need to we would bring crew over from other boats. Redline Welding, they did all the welding. They were our key guys.”

The Redline team built up new bulwarks, a shelterdeck, and new wheelhouse according to the loftings provided by Argonaut Marine. And according to Becker, surveyor Jesus Larringa kept them on track as far as building everything according to class.

“We classed the boat with RINA,” says Becker. “It’s an Italian classification society.” RINA, the Registro Italiano Navale, was founded in Genoa, Italy — home port of Christopher Columbus — in 1861.

“For example, we have to have a certain amount of freeing ports for the volume of water that could come on deck for each section of the boat. That’s why you see those big scuppers around the bow on the shelter deck. Everything has to be approved. Sometimes it got to be a little bit of a hairdo. We had to build tunnels under the shelter deck to meet the standards.”

The Bering Hope will usually carry a crew of five, with three staterooms on the shelterdeck below the wheelhouse, and two larger staterooms on the main deck. “We have accommodations for 12, in case we do any survey work. Right now, we turned one of them into a storeroom.” Below decks the Bering Hope has only the engine room with the main and auxiliary engines, and tankage for fuel, ballast and fresh water.

“She’s a catcher vessel,” says Becker. “So there’s no fish hold, she just takes the bag to the processing vessel. We store extra web and gear under the shelter deck along the sides of the main deck.”

Graced with a new bow, wheelhouse, and stern, along with higher sides and a shelterdeck, the Bering Hope nears completion at the Western Pioneer Dock in Seattle.

Deck gear consists of two Rapp MacGregor winches, each holding 2,400 meters (7,900 feet) of 26-millimeter (1-inch) wire. In addition to the Rapp winches the deck includes a range of Pullmaster winches for the gilson, cod end, and sweep; and an SOW 300, a third-wire winch for the net monitors.

“There’s two net reels,” says Becker, so they can spool the net out to work on it, and there’s third transfer reel for changing the nets.”

In addition to a 3-ton Rapp crane, two gantries fore and aft offer points of lift for the gear. They also house the stacks for the engines. “All the exhaust runs up through aft gantry, and then the thruster and the hydraulic engine come out the forward gantry,” says Becker.

The electronics aboard the Bering Hope, mostly supplied by Lunde Marine Electronics, leave little to guess work.

“They’ve got the full package,” says Becker. “Everything, including the Seapix-F sonar, which is the latest and greatest. It’s made in France.”

The rest of the package includes two Furuno Radars, a Furuno FCV1900 sounder, a Simrad ES80 sonar, Simrad FS70 trawl sonar, Marport net monitoring system, Olex bottom builder, ECC globe charts. “All the electronics are down below on the shelterdeck,” says Becker. The vessel may be the first in the United States to use the Avitech Marine multiview system, designed to give vessel operators a single adaptable display for all the data and imagery they’re using. “The only thing in the wheelhouse are the displays. And the captain can configure those the way they want them.” The electronics also include a Maverick satellite system. “They make trips of 21 to 28 days,” says Becker. “The crew can get on there to do backing, check email, things like that, but not a lot more, the data is still expensive.” The boat made its first trip to Alaska in August 2021 and spent 3 1/2 months in the Bering Sea. “The boat is big for a catcher, but OPI [Ocean Peace Inc.] wanted a large catcher boat for greater endurance and one that could withstand the rougher seas that the smaller vessels cannot,” says the boat’s captain, Arron Burbach. “One of the biggest benefits of this boat’s size is its ability to ride the swells. She’s not so small as to get thrown around, but not too big to slam between sets. The bow design perfectly breaks the swell. Not only can this boat withstand rough waters, we can still tow through them with no problem. Because of this, the BH is absolutely a producer.”

Burbach is also thrilled with the electronics package and the Avitech Multiview system.

“The electronic system on the BH is state of the art,” says Burbach. “Lunde Marine did an excellent install of all the systems in the wheelhouse. Everything is run through the Avitech Marine Multiview system. I for one, love it! It allows me to focus more on the job of fishing, maneuvering and crew safety rather than fumbling through less advanced systems to get the information I need quickly. The multiview camera system allows me to see the guys on the deck and in the mechanical areas. The aesthetics rival the functionality; it’s a fun system!”

While Burbach, Becker and Ocean Peace are pleased, there will always be refinements made as the boat spends more time fishing. But for now, Becker and Ocean Peace are pleased and proud to have made a state of the art fishing vessel out of a mud boat that might have rusted away on the coast of Louisiana.

Paul Molyneaux is the Boats & Gear editor for National Fisherman and author of “The Doryman’s Reflection.”