When we click to connect with someone either next door, or on another continent thousands of miles away, it’s easy to forget the internet isn’t made of magic. In reality, our interconnected world has been created through thousands of miles of undersea cable laid thanks to years of planning, intergovernmental cooperation, engineering, heavy equipment and very hard, methodical work.
In the complex job of subsea cable laying, Guice Offshore multi-purpose vessels and mini supply vessels play key roles in the success of these highly technical marine operations, including assisting with pre-lay survey work, pre-lay grapnel run (PLGR) and route clearance, post-lay inspection and repair, decommissioning and recovery in accordance with major standards for a variety of industries, including telecommunications, oil and gas, and offshore wind.
With the Guice Offshore fleet ranging in size from 150 ft. to 205 ft., our dynamically positioned vessels are agile enough to navigate areas that larger vessels can’t.
Recently, the Guice Offshore team created a way to outfit our vessels for subsea cable work that forgoes the need for days of long, costly welding, along with helping to clear more deck space that can otherwise be used for carrying survey gear or storing debris during pre-lay grapnel runs (PLGR), an operation designed to ensure the seabed along a planned cable pathway is clear and free of extraneous debris prior to the actual cable being laid. Guice Offshore’s custom addition affords our clients a more cost-effective way to ensure more actual working time in their overall job planning.
“And we’ve definitely needed that extra room on the deck for marine debris collected during a PLGR,” Guice Offshore Vice President David Scheyd explained. “We recently removed 600 feet of discarded cable, a 2,000 lb. anchor and some sort of chain of significant size.”
All debris items removed from the ocean are properly disposed of according to U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) standards.
For subsea cable-laying operations, Guice Offshore also ensures proper stability calculations according to Coast Guard regulations to help maximize load and installation of heavy equipment like A-frames according to vessel size.
“We have the right-size vessels, we have the equipment, and we have the experienced deck support and knowledge to do these highly technical jobs right,” Scheyd added.
To learn more about submarine cables, click here.
To charter a Guice Offshore vessel, contact David Scheyd at david.scheyd@guiceoffshore.com or (985) 273-2769
