Ontario’s Kanter Marine wins $5.3M contract to build survey vessels for feds

OTTAWA—The government of Canada has awarded St. Thomas, Ont.’s Kanter Marine Inc. a $5.3 million contract to build seven new survey vessels for the Canadian Hydrographic Service.

Designed to survey and chart seabeds throughout the country’s vast navigable waters, the vessels will be outfitted with multibeam sonar systems, which transit hundreds of beams of sound through the water to create 3-D images of the shape and depth of the seafloor.

“These new hydrographic survey vessels are critical investments, which will improve marine safety and allow us to deepen our scientific knowledge of our oceans and waterways,” Hunter Tootoo, Canada’s minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard, said. “This innovative technology will help us to deliver on the Government of Canada’s commitment to protect our marine environment and manage our fisheries in a sustainable way.”

Kanter Marine is expected to begin construction on the news ships immediately and deliver on the contract by March of next year. Once completed, the federal government will add the vessels to its current fleet of survey ships across Canada; they will collect data throughout the St. Lawrence River, the Great Lakes, the Arctic and on the East Coast.