Comments on: Padre

By: seabart

seabart — Sun, 16 May 2010 06:43:53 +0000

Will: yes I have heard of at least one case of dredgers using their rainbowing gear as fire fighting monitors. But they are not handy for it. They give a lot of water fast and they can actually sink the vessel on fire before the fire is put out. Ofcourse that’s also a way of extinguishing the said fire but I don’t think the outcome will really please or suit everybody.

By: tugster

tugster — Fri, 14 May 2010 02:06:21 +0000

dan– i hadn’t thought about oyster dredges, but of course…

By: Daniel Meeter

Daniel Meeter — Thu, 13 May 2010 21:18:12 +0000

As for sail-powered dredges, does it count if we include old “oyster-dredges”? They were certainly under sail.

By: Les Sonnenmark

Les Sonnenmark — Thu, 13 May 2010 20:12:02 +0000

During the cleanup after the EXXON VALDEZ spill, two of the Corps of Engineers dredges (YAQUINA and ESSAYONS) sucked up a major fraction of the floating oil by inverting their dragheads and bringing them up near the surface within a pool of floating oil that small craft had corralled with a large closed loop of boom. The oil/water mix was sucked into the hoppers and allowed to settle, and water was drained from the bottom. The oil was pumped off into barges. I haven’t heard of this technique being used for the BP spill.

By: bonnie

bonnie — Thu, 13 May 2010 20:00:40 +0000

Nice! We saw a lot of her out in J-bay this winter – had fun taking pictures of her one day -

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/6y2bkZCNKtGJGftBxnDYPg?feat=directlink

(don’t freak, folks, she’s anchored)

I’ve passed this along to the Sebago gang, think they’ll enjoy.

By: Lemming

Lemming — Thu, 13 May 2010 17:12:37 +0000

The Dutch are the past and present kings of dredging (despite what Great Lakes might say ).

The Krabbelaar was a pretty neat little tide powered dredge. It was a barge with poles going into the bottom. The tide would push it back and forth and stir up the bottom.

They’ve come a bit further since then: http://www.boskalis.com/index_vloot.php?pageID=3

However, only US dredges operated by US companies are allowed in the US.

By: tugster

tugster — Thu, 13 May 2010 17:06:13 +0000

lemming– thanks for the info, particularly on the draghead itself. later, i’ll add those links to this site. sucking up ordinance would . . . suck!

By: tugster

tugster — Thu, 13 May 2010 17:02:48 +0000

they just dammed bodies of water, had the sweet winds of the north sea pump out the water, and then maybe carved out what fluff they needed removed with shovels, buckets, coffeecups, …

By: bowsprite

bowsprite — Thu, 13 May 2010 16:45:42 +0000

read somewhere that the dutch were incredible dredgers. I do wonder what your ancestors used.

By: Lemming

Lemming — Thu, 13 May 2010 16:22:54 +0000

The odds of you seeing a dredge rainbow in the Northeast are pretty slim.

You can find some more about the Padre Island on Great Lakes’ website:

http://www.gldd.com/images/Static/OurFleet_1_5-2.pdf

The Corps of Engineers has some animations and videos that may be of interest.

http://el.erdc.usace.army.mil/dots/doer/anima/turtle.avi
http://el.erdc.usace.army.mil/dots/doer/anima/dragarm.avi
http://el.erdc.usace.army.mil/dots/doer/anima/dredgefill.avi

This sort of dredge picks up less fauna and teasure that one might expect. The mouth of the draghead will (when in the Lower Bay) have screens on them intended to keep ordnance out of the dredge. This will tend to keep most larger items out too.

The head is operated against the bottom so it’s largely animals that live in the sand itself that are of concern. Special measures (such as screens) are employed to keep sea turtles out of the dredge. Should a turtle be picked up there are reporting requirements. Offhand I’ve never heard of a turtle take in NY.