Down where it's wetter

Undersea exploration and monitoring of natural resources is set to be revolutionised by acoustic sensing technology using fibre optics developed at

(ANU).

The technology is 100 times more sensitive than current techniques and the optical fibre sensors can be deployed up to 100 kilometres away from the central recording station without significant degradation of signal quality.

Dr. Mal Gray, Mr. Jong Chow and Professor David McClelland, from the Centre for Gravitational Physics at ANU, working with Dr. Ian Littler for the University of Sydney, were responsible for developing the technique.

“This patented technology has tremendous potential for marine mineral exploration, monitoring of sea and gas reserves, as well as security and submarine surveillance,” project leader Gray said.

The ANU led team bettered the world record in fibre strain sensitivity by more than a factor of 100 and has achieved this at the end of a length of optical fibre five kilometres long.