CSA provides the services of our professional and experienced staff to assess, rehabilitate, enhance, and monitor marine habitats damaged by marine operations or shipping accidents. We provide initial damage assessment services to quantify the level of impacts and assist in minimizing further damages immediately following an incident. This often includes the preparation of a Habitat Equivalency Analysis (HEA) to place a value on the impacted resources to determine appropriate compensation and mitigation for damages and lost ecological services.
The most potentially damaging impact of shipping on local marine environments is from maritime transport accidents. When these accidents occur, there is a very real possibility that the vessel could leak fuel or other hazardous chemicals or fluids.
Any of these types of impacts can cause extensive damage to surrounding marine communities, including marshes, seagrass beds, oyster reefs, hardbottom areas, and coral reefs. Rehabilitation services can include spill cleanup, site remediation such as substrate stabilization, seagrass re-planting, and coral reattachment in reef areas, and subsequent monitoring to measure habitat recovery.
Specialized Port Authority
Surveying in and around ports is inherently unique as the objective is to capture data specific to vertical manmade features—such as, large pilings, vertical sheet pile walls, bulkheads, etc.—as opposed to the data points of the naturally occurring marine environment.
CSA works with port authorities to run critical seawall inspections to help inform port engineers of any structural anomalies, deficiencies, or need for routine maintenance.
To keep people out of harm’s way and optimize operational efficiency in port waters, we often deploy our expanding fleet of ASVs to run the actual survey lines. Our ASVs support the latest high-resolution sonar systems to capture 3D imaging of submerged structures.
These datasets are then used to build 3D models to help inform operators of any future structural upgrades or dredging requirements to ensure adequate clearance for the large draft ships to dock safely.
