ARC series acoustic releases rely on our patented wire burn mechanism with just a single moving part.   A strong jolt of electricity near instantly evaporates a nickel-chromium wire, setting free the lever arm.   This simplicity translates to reliability - along with small size and moderate cost.  Software keeps track of all your releases, including each station's GPS position.  This makes ARC releases in particular suitable for large deployments.  ARC releases acoustically report their status, and the distance to each release is measured with sub-meter precision. Position your boat directly above a release before trigger, or verify its presence and remaining battery power during a deployment.  If a release should get fouled, an ROV or diver mounted interrogator (VLT-1) is available to quickly locate the device.

Due to their reliability, capability and ease of use, the ARC-1 has become a very popular release for operators of large undersea instrumentation arrays and users with an occasional need to deploy and recover small numbers of instruments alike.

Customer Reviews and Comments:

From Cronulla Fisheries Research Center, Australia:

The next day we were able to make a few releases in a bucket of water and everyone was impressed.  I connected the release to a rope bag in a rather crude way but it worked and we were able to recognize its potential by releasing a float from the rope bag in a swimming pool.  Since then, we have shown the fishermen the demonstration and discussed in detail how we move forward.  At the moment one of the releases is with one of the fishermen so he can determine the method of attaching the release to the rope bag and the rope bag to the trap.  
Everyone involved is impressed and somewhat surprised at the level of engineering of the system and so far we don't expect any problems.

From Northrop Grumman:
So far, we have had a total of 9 successful deployments and releases of our system using the ARC-1R Remote Release.  Our entire system, including the release worked flawlessly. 

From ARCADIS:

We put 26 traps down and got all our gear back - a success.