Skimmer · CS-520 · Spill-Response Survey & Marking Craft

FIND THE EDGE.
MARK IT. MEASURE IT.

Name: Skimmer CS-520
Brand: Canadian Shield
SKU: CS-520

A small moulded surface craft — the information and marking layer of a spill response.

Find · Mark · Measure · Treat — Shore-Enabled

Contact Canadian Shield → Watch the Industrial Film → Back to the Industrial Line

Patent pending Radio and GNSS permitted — civil work machine

~15 KG

Displacement — a two-person lift at the water’s edge

~1.2 M

Waterline length — truck-deployable, no crane

3 FITS

One payload bay — buoys, sensing, sealed dispersant

Shared hull & station-keeping module across the water trio

What It Is

The First Hour of a Spill
Is an Information Problem.

When oil reaches water, the response that matters most in the first hours is not collection — it is knowing exactly where the slick is, where its edge runs, how thick it sits, and where the worst of it is heading.

Skimmer is a small, two-person-liftable moulded surface craft built for exactly that job. Launched from a truck, a dock or a workboat, it runs the slick edge on its own station-keeping, marks the boundary with high-visibility moulded buoys it leaves in the water, measures thickness along its track, and streams the growing map to shore over commercial radio and GNSS — the civil line's standing advantage, used openly. A team of craft turns a rumour of a slick into a georeferenced perimeter a response commander can act on.

We are precise about the name. Skimmer does not mechanically recover oil — bulk recovery belongs to boom-and-skimmer vessels two orders of magnitude larger, and within our own fleet to Recovery CS-580, its pairing platform. Skimmer is deliberately the finding-and-marking layer: the craft that makes every one of those bigger assets arrive at the right place, first time. Where a regulator has approved dispersant for the incident, a sealed cartridge variant can spot-treat the worst patches — and only on a positive command from shore.

The Division of Labour

Skimmer finds and measures. Recovery collects.

The water trio splits a spill response the way a fire crew splits a fireground: Skimmer CS-520 is reconnaissance and marking, Recovery CS-580 is bulk collection, Dredger CS-570 works the sediment. One shared hull and station-keeping module underneath all three — three jobs, one parts bin.

Finds, marks and measures — Skimmer does not mechanically recover oil; bulk collection belongs to the recovery layer and, within the fleet, to Recovery CS-580.
Radio & GNSS aboard, openly — permitted on this surface civil line: commercial radio for telemetry and shore command, GNSS for the track and every logged buoy drop.
No autonomous path to the spray bar — dispersant is geofenced, logged and enabled only by a positive shore command, and only where a regulator has approved it for the incident.

01 How It Works · The Survey Cycle

FIND. MARK. MEASURE. TREAT — SHORE-ENABLED.

One loop, four phases: find the edge, mark it, measure it — and treat only where shore says so. The craft repeats the cycle until the perimeter is closed or the pack runs down.

FIND. A bow sensor sweeps a swath ahead of the craft and discriminates oil from water; the autopilot turns along the boundary and holds it, station-keeping against the current the way the shared hull module was designed to.

MARK. At intervals along the edge, the aft chute releases a moulded high-visibility buoy that stays behind as a physical fix — visible to crewed vessels and aircraft with no screen in the loop. Every drop is logged with position.

MEASURE. Thickness sensing along the track grades the slick, so the map shows not just where the oil is but where it is worst — the difference between a perimeter and a plan.

TREAT. With the dispersant fit installed and a regulator's approval on the incident, shore command can positively enable spot treatment inside a geofence. Release is logged, litre by litre. The craft never decides this on its own — by design, there is no autonomous path to the spray bar.

ON STATION CS-520 · survey cycle — sequence shown, not rates

PAYLOAD BAY CS-520 · payload bay — buoys · sensing · dispersant

02 The Payload Bay · The Bay Rule

ONE BAY. THREE FITS.
A NEW PAYLOAD IS A TOOLING CHANGE.

The deck carries a single payload bay with a common mechanical, power and data interface — and exactly one positively-enabled actuation line, designed in from the start, never patched on.

Fit one is the marker-buoy dispenser: a stack of moulded, high-visibility buoys — the consumable the craft exists to spend. Fit two is sensing: a water-quality sonde and oil-thickness measurement, the mission's enabling instrument. Fit three is the sealed dispersant cartridge and its low, shrouded spray bar — a fit that only sails when a regulator has approved dispersant for the incident, and one the platform is designed to drop entirely without losing anything structural if the approval never comes.

The cartridge is the custody boundary: moulded in-house, filled by a licensed chemical partner, swapped as a sealed unit. Canadian Shield does not formulate and operators never handle open chemical.

Full Specification Sheet

Every Number, Grouped for the Walk-Around.

The complete data card for the Skimmer — dimensions, performance, drive and control, payload, construction and compliance, grouped the way a working fleet buyer compares them.

Skimmer CS-520 · Spill-Response Survey & Marking Craft Industrial Line · Civil Work Machine · Water Trio

01Dimensions & Mass

Displacement / mass: ~15 kg (0.015 m³) — a two-person lift
Waterline length: ~1.2 m
Hull form: Self-righting moulded monohull
Configuration: Small uncrewed surface craft — launched from a truck, a dock or a workboat

02Performance

Survey speed: ~1.25 m/s (~2.4 kn)
Station-keeping: Holds station against ~0.5 m/s adverse current
Survey swath: ~5 m — set by the edge sensor
Endurance: ~10–12 h calm water, at ~13–15 W total draw
Operating water: Nearshore, harbour and inland water — a sheltered-water tool by design

03Drive & Control

Drive: Single electric drive — shrouded, fouling-tolerant
Energy: 200 Wh-class sealed pack, swappable at the shoreline
Station-keeping module: Shared shallow-draft hull & station-keeping module — common across the water trio
Communications: Commercial radio + GNSS — permitted and standard on the civil line; telemetry and release logging to shore
Visibility: High-visibility finish, all-round light, radar-reflective mast — a work craft that wants to be seen

04Payload & Tools

Payload bay: One common bay — mechanical + power + data + one positively-enabled actuation line
Fit 1 — marking: Marker-buoy dispenser — moulded high-visibility consumables, released on command, every drop logged
Fit 2 — sensing: Water-quality sonde + oil-thickness measurement
Fit 3 — treatment: ~3 L sealed dispersant cartridge — geofenced, logged, shore-enabled only

05Materials & Construction

Hull: Recycled-PET glass-fibre compound (rPET-GF), moulded in-house
Buoys: Moulded in-house — the consumable the craft exists to spend
Cartridge: Moulded in-house, filled by a licensed chemical partner, swapped as a sealed unit
Tooling: Hull, deck, trays and buoys moulded on Canadian-cut tooling

06Recovery & Turnaround

Turnaround: Two-person lift-out, pressure-wash decontamination, pack swap, buoy restock
Sensor windows: Sacrificial — swapped out after oiled sorties
Buoy retrieval: Every buoy position logged for retrieval — nothing left adrift

07Compliance

Patent status: Patent pending
Line classification: Civil work platform — surface Industrial line; radio and GNSS permitted, used openly
Mission boundary: Finds, marks and measures — does not mechanically recover oil; bulk collection is Recovery CS-580 scope
Dispersant governance: Regulator-approved incidents only — geofenced, logged, enabled solely by positive shore command; never autonomous
Energetic content: None — no warhead, no fuze, no terminal-effect content of any kind

No headline coverage or treated-area figure is published: coverage per craft is swath × speed × time-on-edge, and treated area per cartridge is set by slick thickness and the dispersant-to-oil ratio the regulator approves for the incident. A single number without those variables attached is meaningless — so, as with the spot-spray platforms, the variables are stated and the number is not.

In the Doctrine

A Work Machine
From the Same Shop as the Fleet.

The Industrial line is Canadian Shield's civil line: the same sovereign manufacturing stack that moulds the defence fleet, pointed at work — seeding, spraying, dredging, spill response.

Skimmer is that doctrine on the water. Hull, deck, trays and buoys are moulded in-house on Canadian-cut tooling; the buoys — the consumable the platform spends — are among the purest expressions of our recycled-material discipline in the whole fleet. The shallow-draft hull and station-keeping module underneath it is shared with Recovery CS-580 and Dredger CS-570, so the water trio rides one parts bin, one tooling family and one sustainment stream. Drawn once, used three times: that is the economics that lets a municipality or a port authority afford a team of these instead of one of something exquisite.

And because this is the civil line, the craft talks. Commercial radio and GNSS are permitted up here and used openly — live telemetry, a shared map, positive shore control of anything that matters. The defence fleet's no-radio discipline exists for the jammed battlefield; a harbour spill response needs the opposite, and gets it.

The Civil Ruling

Not a weapon. Not a variant of one. A tool.

Skimmer carries buoys, sensors and — only where approved — sealed dispersant. No warhead, no fuze, no energetic or terminal-effect content of any kind, ever; the family shorthand is “carriers, not munitions,” and on the civil line the carrier carries work. It is high-visibility by doctrine: a response craft among crewed vessels is built to be seen, not to hide.

Deployment

A Harbour Morning, Run Properly.

A fuel barge has put oil in the water overnight. The response's first question is not “how do we collect it” — it is “where is it, and where will it be at noon.” This is Skimmer's hour — illustrative of how the craft works a nearshore, harbour or river-reach incident, not an incident record.

01 · Arrive

Off the Truck, Into the Water

A crew of two arrives at the boat launch with craft racked in the pickup bed — charged packs, buoy stacks, and the sensing fits already latched. Two people lift each craft to the water: no crane, no trailer queue, no ramp negotiation. Swappable sealed packs keep the team on the water instead of waiting on a charger, and the shore station is up in minutes — commercial radio link, shared map, enable authority.

02 · Work

The Team Closes the Perimeter

A team of craft fans out to the reported slick, finds the edge and starts walking it — each holding station against the current, each streaming its track. The edge hardens, buoy after moulded buoy left bobbing at the boundary with every drop logged; thickness measurements grade the map to show where the oil is worst. The perimeter streams to the command GIS — and if dispersant is approved for the incident, shore enables spot treatment inside the geofence. The craft never self-authorizes.

03 · Recover

Everything Comes Home

Recovery-layer vessels work the marked, graded slick. The Skimmer team lifts out, washes down and reconciles the count: every oiled sortie ends at the pressure-wash fittings, sacrificial sensor windows swap out, packs swap and buoys restock. Buoy positions are logged for retrieval — nothing is left adrift, because a response tool must never become its own pollution incident.

The Industrial Line · At a Glance

One Hull. Three Jobs.

Skimmer is the finding-and-marking third of the water trio — three craft on one shared shallow-draft hull and station-keeping module, moulded on the same Canadian tooling as the rest of the line. Same canon, different jobs.

This craft

CS-520 · Water trio

Skimmer

The information and marking layer — finds the edge, marks it, measures it, and treats only on a positive shore command.

Download PDF ↓

CS-580 · Water trio

Recovery

The pairing platform — bulk collection of the slick Skimmer has found, marked and graded.

Download PDF ↓

CS-570 · Water trio

Dredger

The third of the trio — works the sediment on the same shared hull and station-keeping module.

Download PDF ↓

CS-510 · Line anchor

Seeder

The Industrial line's anchor — the same civil-line rules: radio and GNSS permitted, used openly.

Download PDF ↓

The Industrial Line

The First Hour Belongs
to Whoever Has the Map.

If you run a port, a municipality, a terminal or a response organization, the conversation worth having is about the information layer of your worst morning — and about the Canadian shop floor it is moulded on.

Contact Canadian Shield → Watch the Industrial Film → The Industrial Line The Fleet

Full Marketing Package

The Rest of the Fleet.

Every Canadian Shield platform has a brochure like this one — same depth, same status discipline, same refusal to publish a number we cannot source. Organized by family below.

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