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Salvage Tug Data Feed — Trial With a North Sea Operator

By Field Engineering · February 5, 2026 · 5 min read

A salvage operator asked whether the deck telemetry could be streamed to the tug command before boarding. Six weeks of integration work later, the answer was yes.

A North Sea salvage operator approached us after the Morning Midas casualty with a specific question: could the live deck telemetry from an instrumented PCTC be streamed to the tug command before boarding decisions are made? The answer required six weeks of integration but ended up being a yes.

What had to be built

  • A read-only data path from the vessel server to a shore relay during emergency conditions.
  • A simplified telemetry view scoped to deck thermal state, no operational data.
  • An access protocol triggered only by the master's explicit authorisation.

What changed in the salvage approach

The salvage operator was able to see deck-by-deck thermal state during the tow-in approach, including which decks were still escalating and which had stabilised. Boarding decisions changed; tug positioning relative to wind direction changed. The qualitative feedback was that the data shifted the approach from "manage the unknown" to "manage the known."

The biggest unmet need in modern salvage of a vehicle carrier is information. The detection layer is in a position to provide it — if the data architecture lets it flow.
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