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marineelectronics Falcon ROV Helps Orca Whale Swim in 'Free Willy' Film Helping liberate the whale in the fourth remake of the movie "Free Wil- ly," filmed in South Africa, is a Saab Seaeye Ltd. (Fareham, England) Falcon ROV owned and operated by Marine Solutions (Cape Town, South Africa). With Willy strapped to its back, the Falcon used its five thrusters and elec- tronics to give Willy the wriggle mo- tion to mimic swimming, Saab Seaeye said in July. The moves were created by ROV pilots Nick Stroud and Josh Smit of Marine Solutions, who controlled the Falcon. The biggest challenge, accord- ing to the company, was to make the Orca whale's swimming motions look natural. Use of the Falcon helped keep down the cost of filming by allowing the director to film the sequences in a relatively short period of time, accord- ing to Marine Solutions. The Falcon successfully maneu- vered in both swimming pool and the open ocean by balancing the buoy- ancy to compensate between seawater and freshwater. "Free Willy" is not the first time the Falcon has operated in the movies. In the Bollywood film "Luck," also filmed in South Africa, it was strapped under a 4.2-meter-long latex and polyurethane replica of a tiger shark and used to mimic a natural swimming motion and attack moves. NDBC Sets New Depth Record For UnderwayCTD Technicians from NOAA's National Data Buoy Center (NDBC) working on the DART project (Deep-ocean Assess- ment and Reporting of Tsunamis) be- came the first Oceanscience (Oceans- ide, California) UnderwayCTD users to attain a cast depth of more than 2,000 meters with a record-breaking 2,041- meter cast during a mooring service cruise on the MV Bluefin in July. The record cast took 50 minutes total, beat- ing the same group's 1,563-meter cast a year earlier. Hardware upgrades to the system on the Bluefin allowed the NDBC group to gather CTD profiles, even though the vessel was not equipped with a conventional deepwater CTD winch. NDBC technicians visit the DART tsunami warning moorings in the North Pacific Ocean annually to con- duct routine maintenance. DART moorings have a taut scope of 0.97 and are very sensitive to snap loading so water depth must be known to the highest degree of accuracy possible. An echosounder is used to determine the exact water depth at each mooring location, and an accurate CTD-derived sound speed profile is also required. As the maintenance cruises are not conducted on oceanographic research vessels equipped with deepwater CTD winches, the NDBC team needed a portable system that could be easily installed to gather the CTD profiles. A key requirement was the capability to cover most of the water depth with the CTD profile; 2,000 meters was speci- fied as the maximum required profile depth. The NDBC's UnderwayCTD was first used in 2011. Deep profiles were WORLD CLASS Through People, Technology & Dedication For more information about our products, please contact us at +1 508-563-6565 www.hydroid.com 70 st / SEPTEMBER 2012 www.sea-technology.com