Bude Canal Survey
Last week, we made the long drive in our company pickup from Norfolk to Cornwall, in order to survey Bude Canal, an artificial water body popular with tourists and water voles alike! The canal has been silting up significantly over the last several years and is due some maintenance dredging to improve navigability for the kayaks and paddleboards, as well as the water quality for the water voles and other important species calling it home.
In order to set up an efficient dredging campaign, detailed information about existing water and silt depth is needed, both of which can be provided by using a dual frequency single beam bathymetry system. At Exo, we pride ourselves in finding ways to survey the most challenging environments such as these, where over water vegetation causes difficulty with positioning, and extremely shallow depths and underwater vegetation really pushes the echosounding equipment to its limits.
In order to not disturb the sensitive habitat, we utilised an almost silent electric outboard engine. This not only removes the noise disturbance and improves our environmental impacts, but it also drew a lot of attention from the tourists visiting the Canal on the days of the survey, proving that people are very keen for electric
mobility and interested in this future technology!
At Exo Environmental we provide a wide range of hydrographic surveying services for clients of all sizes. From a small lake, drainage canals or entire harbours, we cover it all! If you have a water body that needs bathymetric surveying please do get in touch, we offer competitive prices and would love to work with you!
You can contact us via email (enquiries@exo-env.co.uk), the form on our Contact Page or on any of our social media accounts! (Twitter, Facebook). Also, if you haven’t already, make sure you check out our YouTube channel and subscribe! We’re posting an array of videos from project updates to tutorials and more! Visit our YouTube channel here: Exo Environmental YouTube.
