AIS y “mi tesoro”
We have so much fun talking about AIS, that news like this are just hilarious (otherwise as tax-payers, we should cry!). (sorry, in spanish only)
The summary of the story is the following:
The odyssey explorer, a treasure-hunter american ship from the Odyssey Marine Exploration company, has been exploring spanish or close to spanish waters for some time, searching for ship-wrecks likely to have huge treasures inside.
Spanish authorities have been tracking Odyssey’s position through coastal AIS receivers. They lost Odyssey’s track at around 30 miles from the coast. Spanish authorities suggest that Odyssey may have disconnected it’s transponder’s signal, whereas Odyssey’s officials argue that probably only the 30 miles distance was the reason that the AIS receivers lost track of them.
Ok, we know that class A transponders with enough power (trust me, this one has it!) can be seen from the coast at far longer distances than that. So it is actually likely that they did disconnect it, but our question is: if Spanish authorities were actually suspicious that they could be treasure-hunting in Spanish waters, why TF did they not send an undercover boat with an AIS receiver only following Odyssey??
Odyssey may lose the treasure through legal measures.
Spain may lose it (already did) or not recover it.
So the real winner is: AN AMERICAN LAWYER NAMED MR. GOULD!!
Algunas notas sobre SPREEX
We’d like to comment a few things about the SPREEX workshop we’ve just attended in Madrid during the last couple of days.
There were some working groups, and we were in the one that studies real time detection and tracking technologies, specially focusing on early detection of spills.
It was very interesting for us attending this workshop, and specially witnessing the big efforts done by officials and experts in order to improve our chances for an early detection and proper response to spills.
All the conclusions will be available for download in the spreex website here.
In particular, in our round table some of the topics covered mentioned:
- The necesity of using aircraft on a larger scale with the latest technologies, as the ones present in SASEMAR aircraft. The reason is the little frequency with which satellites cover a certain area.
- Current methods seem to be insufficient for sub-surface detection, and efforts for R&D in this field should be made.
- It is also important to improve the time between the detection and the arrival to the decision centres, i.e. the transmission times.
- Prediction models were also target of the discussion, and experts expressed the necessity of creating a unified european database of the different types of oil due to its importance for the prediction of movement of oil spills.
- Some respondents praised the good options of combining AIS with other sensor technologies, and agreeing with the conclusions of our partners at True Heading, believe that efforts should be made in the R&D of new systems and applications compatible with AIS.