Long term current monitoring at U-864 location outside Fedje 2014-2015

Summary

In January 2014, NIVA participated in a survey by the wreck of submarine U-864 outside Fedje. NIVA’s role was to carry out environmental monitoring during the survey. The cruise was ended by the deployment of an acoustic current profiler close to the wreck. The purpose was to perform a long term current monitoring of one year in the area and provide detailed information about current conditions for planning future subsea activities. The current profiler was deployed at 152 m depth between the two pieces of the submarine U-864 wreck. A trench with depths of about 174 m is found to the north of the site. The measurements started January 14, 2014 and ended 23 March, 2015. This represent at valuable and rare time series of current conditions in the Norwegian coastal current. The currents vary with depth, and the observations are divided into three layers: a bottom layer from 125m to 150m, an intermediate layer from 30m to 125m and a surface layer from 0m to 30m. The most striking characteristics of the current field are that the flow occurs mostly in the northerly direction and with a relatively high current speed.