Benthic landers are self-contained platforms that can work remotely on the seabed, often thousands of metres below the sea surface. A lander typically comprises a frame, instrument payload, ballast and buoyancy. The instrumentation that is attached to the frame determines whether a lander is used for making biological, chemical, geochemical or physical measurements.

The benthic lander centre at SAMS is a steel framed building, purpose built to house, test, maintain and develop the SAMS lander fleet. The building is also used as a convenient workspace for other bulky marine equipment such as camera / umbilical systems, ADCP, release systems, industrial winches etc

The building has a main hall with floor space of approx 110m² and a mezzanine of 40m². The main hall is equipped with an overhead travelling crane with 2 tonne capacity and crane scales can be fitted allowing accurate measurement of items up to this weight. The hall can be accessed through a 4.5 x 4.5m roller door, allowing fork lift work within the hall. There is also limited storage space within the hall and mezzanine.

The benthic lander centre is equipped with some machine tooling in the form of a drilling machine and chop saw, within its 20 m² workshop, which also has workbenches, vice, extensive hand and fitting tools and soldering equipment. SAMS service block is conveniently placed next door where the full range of M&E and B&CE functions can be quickly accessed.

The marine technology mechanical design office is also housed with in the building. Specialist CAD, solid modelling and finite element analysis are examples of typical work undertaken here.

For more info contact Alistair James.