A dredging apparatus for removing sediments from a bed of an expanse of water, includes: a suction apparatus including a) a submersible pump including: a housing body provided with an inlet mouth and with a discharge opening and an impeller rotatably supported in the body between the inlet mouth and the discharge opening and rotatably driven by a respective driving device; and b) a suction head associated to the inlet mouth of the housing body of the pump and provided at the bottom with a suction opening of the sediments; wherein the suction opening of the head has a value of the cross-section area dimensioned to achieve in the working range of the pump a suction speed capable of removing the sediments by means of the fluid dynamics removal action carried out by the water sucked into the head.

A excavation system includes an excavator that has a bucket and the bucket has a forward edge. A plurality of mounts is provided and each of the mounts is attached to the bucket. A plurality of gripping members is provided and each of the gripping members is removably attached to an associated one of the mounts. Thus, each of the gripping members may engage plant material in a body of water thereby facilitating the excavator to remove the plant material from the body of water.

A seabed-resource lifting device causing deep-sea mud that contains rare-earth elements to rise from depths of 5000 m or more. This seabed-resource lifting device includes: a transport hose that includes a first hose and a second hose and that hangs from a resource-recovery vessel to the seabed; a crawler-type collector that includes a first suction chamber that sends mud from the seabed to the first hose, and a second suction chamber that sends mud from the seabed to the second hose; a water electrolyzer that, using electricity supplied from the resource-recovery vessel, electrolyzes water so as to generate hydrogen gas and oxygen gas; and a gas-injection device that injects the generated hydrogen gas and oxygen gas into the first suction chamber and the second suction chamber, respectively. Mud that contains rare-earth elements rises with sea water due to the buoyancy of the hydrogen gas or oxygen gas.

A device for receiving and removing plastic, sludge-like materials deposited on beds of bodies of water. The device systematically senses the bottom of the body of water, suctions it off layer by layer, and independently moves along even if coarse obstacles are present. The device has at least one pump/compressor, at least one hydraulic unit and at least one electric power generator and is connected on one side to a disposal site or a settling basin or a transportable container on land and on the other side to the suction module by pipelines. The suction module moves along on the bottom independently by a special tracked chassis unit, is connected by a cable to an echo sounding emitter arranged floatingly above the suction module and/or to a GPS receiver, and has a pivoting arm, which independently adapts to the bed of the body of water and oscillates freely.

An apparatus for forming a trench along the bed of a body of water for burying a line lying along such bed including a support structure designed to straddle such line, means for propelling such structure straddling such line and means disposed on such structure including a pair of transversely spaced excavator devices cooperable in forming a trench along the bed of such body of water for receiving such line, each provided with a set of circumferentially spaced, pressurized fluid ejecting nozzles, rotatable about an axis.

An intelligent dredging system for a high-piled wharf and a control method thereof are provided, and the system includes an intelligent monitoring-decision control subsystem and a decentralized high-pressure water disturbance subsystem. The intelligent monitoring-decision control subsystem is composed of a high-precision pile-foundation sediment siltation warning device, a tidal monitoring device and a control terminal. The decentralized high-pressure water disturbance subsystem is composed of a water spraying device, a cable and a multi-loop power distribution device.

Disclosed herein is a hand-held underwater dredge integrated with a metal detector, designed for locating and retrieving metallic objects from aquatic environments. Equipped with a suction-generating electric pump and powered by an onboard battery to enable operation while fully submerged, the dredge features a pipe system leading to a catch can that captures metal items while expelling the water drawn into the pipe system by the generated suction. In operation, users scan a riverbed, seabed, or lakebed using the metal detector. Once a metal item is detected, the user places the suction end of the pipe system over the metal item and activates the electric pump to start the suction, leading to capture of the metal item in the catch can for retrieval. This streamlines the process of underwater treasure hunting, combining detection and collection into a single user-operated system.

A system for underwater payload estimation in a dragline bucket of a dragline machine includes a sensing module disposed on the dragline bucket. The sensing module is configured to generate a plurality of signals indicative of a distance value between the sensing module and payload in the dragline bucket. The system includes a controller including at least one memory and at least one processor communicably coupled with the at least one memory and the sensing module. The at least one processor is configured to receive, from the sensing module, the plurality of signals indicative of the distance value between the sensing module and the payload in the dragline bucket, when the dragline bucket is underwater. The at least one processor is configured to estimate a volume of the payload in the dragline bucket when the dragline bucket is underwater, based on the plurality of signals received.