IMCA Revises Multibeam Echosounds Guidelines

‘Guidelines for the Use of Multibeam Echosounders for Offshore Surveys’ (IMCA S 003 Rev 2) has been extensively revised by members of the International Marine Contractors Association’s (IMCA) Offshore Survey Division Management Committee, to bring it up-to-date with current technology and practice, and is now available for downloading free of charge for members and non-members alike from the IMCA website.


“The growth in the use of multibeam echosounders (MBES) in the past two decades has been in part due to the ability of these instruments to cover wide swathes of the seafloor in a single pass. In addition, increases in processing power and availability of data storage at reasonable prices have made the technology accessible to a wider range of users,” explains IMCA’s Technical Director and Acting Chief Executive, Jane Bugler.

In addition to a glossary of terminology and an introduction, there are sections on multibeam echosounders (overview, installation and operation, transducer, navigation and attitude, motion sensor, heading, synchronised timing, offset measures, water level adjustments, and sound velocity measurements); subsea vehicles and systems; sensor installation, calibration and location; calibration tests (patch tests); MBES data processing; standards for MBES surveys; survey planning; and a bibliography.

Printed copies of the 54-page document, which draws heavily on a number of existing standards and published papers, (by persons eminent in their particular fields), are available from [email protected] at $32  for members and $62 for non-members.