Sampling of sediment cores has been traditionally undertaken by divers. Seabed Services has developed a new system and a rig, ‘Charlie 1’, which makes this work more accurate and effective, and at greater depths than divers could attain. ‘Charlie 1’ is positioned with the assistance of one of Seabed Service’s own vessels, with a specially mounted crane and positioning system. The rig is sunk to the seabed and the desired/specified number of core samples are taken to a defined depth (the technical limit of the equipment is 1m into the sediments). ‘Charlie 1’ takes 3 parallel samples within an area of 1m².

In order to document the position and progress of the sampling, ‘Charlie 1’ is equipped with several lights and a video camera.

Once the samples have been extracted, the core sample may be divided, packaged and stored, according to requirements.