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If you’ve walked along the waterfront in the last week or so, you may have noticed a big ol’ ship docked in Humboldt Bay. That was the Ocean Guardian, a survey vessel that’s been busy helping offshore wind developers map the ocean floor off the coast of Eureka.

RWE announced in June that it would begin initial site surveying for the Canopy Offshore Wind Farm, one of two floating offshore wind projects slated for the Humboldt Wind Energy Area (WEA), located approximately 20 miles west of Eureka. Before environmental review and site planning can begin, offshore wind developers and researchers need a clearer picture of the alien world that lies beneath the ocean’s surface.

RWE has been using an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) designed by Norway-based subsea surveying company Argeo to map the seabed within the Humboldt WEA, where water depths range between 2,400 to 3,200 feet. You can think of an AUV as an underwater drone. It is a self-propelled underwater robot that uses multibeam sonar, side scan imaging and sub-bottom profiling to map the ocean floor below. 

Through this process, RWE will assess the best locations for installing floating wind turbines and electric transmission lines and help developers “better understand biodiversity, habitats and other environmental factors to ensure responsible planning and design” within the Humboldt WEA.

Asked for a progress report on the site surveying process, Canopy RWE spokesperson Ryan Ferguson said the Ocean Guardian has been out at sea for more than a month. (You can check out the vessel’s path on this map.) If you saw it docked in Humboldt Bay last week, that’s because the crew had to stock up on fresh food and other necessities before heading back to the ship’s home port in Washington.

The vessel is in the final stage of the initial survey work. “Our team will now spend the next couple of months processing, reviewing and interpreting the data,” Ferguson said.

Before the site surveying began earlier this summer, a couple of folks from the RWE Canopy team sat down with EcoNews Report host Tom Wheeler to talk about the site surveying process. You can find the full interview at this link.