Echo Sounding

It is important to know how deep a water is. For instance for ships, to prevent them from running underground. Echo Sounding is a system that to measures water depth through transmission of sound pulses and vibrations in water.

Echo Sounding is primary used in navigation, to determine water depths and depths of the sea bed at different locations. There are quite a number of nautical charts available that are acurate and show water depths at most of the world's important places in water. However, there are some badly charted areas such as the north- and south pole. At such places, echo sounding is necessary and therefore used to determine the water depth, to avoid hitting the seabed.

Echo sounding can also helpful in oceans where the water depths shown on nautical by charts are infrequent. It determines the water depth and hence enables the characterization of the ocean area so as to aid in the hunting of ocean features for instance the hydrothermal vents or wrecks.

Echo Sounding is also used for fishing (commercial and recreational) where if a variation is found in the elevation, it indicates a fish congregation or a school of fish.

Echo Sounding System

An Echo Sounding Systems consists of four components:

• First, it uses a so called transducer to generate the sound vibrations. These vibrations are echoed back and received by the transducter.
• It uses a pulse generator, to produce electrical oscillations for the transducer that is transmitting.
• The frail electrical oscillations that have been produced by the receiving transducer are amplified by the amplifier.
• Last but not least there's is the recorder, which is used to measure and ultimately indicate the water depth.

Click here for a list of well-known Echosounder devices.