The underwater security check headquarters of the Qingdao Olympic Regatta
is located on the Beijiu No. 122 Boat of a battle support ship flotilla
patrolling in the peripheral sea areas of the Qingdao Olympic sailing event.
Lv Yongping, commander of the flotilla, told the reporters that the
officers and men of the flotilla have worked hard for more than 90 days to
fulfill the mission of underwater image scanning and water-depth measurement for
a sea area of over 50 square kilometers and obtained firsthand hydrological data
for underwater surveillance for the Olympic sailing event. Their work has won
high praise from the Organizing Committee of the Qingdao Olympic Regatta.
Doing B-ultrasonic scanning for sea
In order to ensure absolute safety for the Olympic Regatta seawaters, the
officers and men carried out underwater scanning by proceeding from outer side
to inside and from deep to shallow without leaving any spot untouched. As the
sea areas are different in depth, ranging from 15 to 23 m in deeper areas or
merely 3.7 m in the shallowest areas. What is more, there are some submerged
reefs in some areas. Since tugboats have deep draught, they are easy to get
grounded. In order to keep abreast with the scanning schedule and ensure a
high-resolution sonar image, they used two landing ships to carry out overall
scanning.
Underwater scanning is something like doing B-ultrasonic scanning for the
sea areas. Qingdao happened to be at the peak fishing season when the scanning
work entered the critical stage. In order to avoid fishing boats and fishing
nets, the officers and men often had to carry out scanning operation in
atrocious weather after the fishing boats returned home. The reporters saw from
ship logs that sometimes they had to scan repeatedly for more than 100 times for
a decimal point.
Making seabed transparent
The purpose of the Olympic maritime scanning mission is to draw an undersea
image picture of the Olympic Regatta sea areas for the officials of the
Organizing Committee of the Qingdao Olympic Regatta, and they set a very high
demand upon the undersea image pictures, which requires very high precision
scanning for accurate measurement.
The flotilla dispatched several ships to carry out scanning operation day
and night, and assigned two senior engineers to give whole-process guidance and
follow-on research of hydrographical and meteorological characteristics in the
related sea areas of the regatta. After working hard for three months, the
officers and men finally submitted a sonar image picture for the regatta sea
areas to the Organizing Committee of the Qingdao Olympic Regatta.
Experts said that the scanning image charts could fully meet the demand of
the regatta, thus it has laid a solid foundation for the Olympic underwater
security work.
By Wang Qinghou and Qian Xiaohu
(Aug 18, PLA
Daily)
Editor: Dong Zhaohui
