Technically speaking, a ship manages to stay afloat only until it has a lower density than the water it is sailing upon. As soon as it reaches a higher density or an equal density, the ship starts submerging rapidly until it is totally sunken to the depths of the ocean. It wouldn’t be wrong to term a ship as one of the greatest marvels of science keeping in view the gigantic sizes and the variety of their uses today. We have ships today that are bigger than a blue whale and weigh more than a dozen of them, yet they are able to stay afloat and travel through the massive oceans with ease.

Some of the biggest ships today are the transport ships which are capable to carry immense loads and sail from one country to another without a problem. But there is only one problem that keeps the ship owners on tethers and that is the holes that emerge in the wildest possible places. Emergence of holes cannot be prevented completely but they can be refilled as soon as they appear. The most prominent places of holes to appear are the ship’s deck and the ship’s cargo hatch covers.

Since the holes are so minute or are in such places where the human eye cannot see, they need to be hunted by the procedure known as checking the tightness of hatch with ultrasound. It is the most advanced and modern way to find holes in a ship’s body. By using the ultrasonic waves to escape from holes or to penetrate through the walls that have lost their thicknesses and are ready to create a hole, the maintenance staff of the shipping company can learn about the holes on a particular ship. Assessing the time of departure decided for the ship and the threat of the hole, the decision is taken and sometimes holes are repaired on emergency basis.

In the past when ship owners needed to check for holes in the ship’s body, they used to hire teams which performed the check by the water hose and chalk testing. This test although was also very much accurate, it wasted a lot of time and costed too much. The high costs kept most of the ship owners delaying the tests and their ship have got more rusted than before. But today by running the hatch cover ultrasonic tightness testing the process of finding holes and damages to the body has become speedy and affordable. And since the device is portable, it can be taken on a journey to keep checking the health of the ship’s body. It has made possible for the ship owners to keep their used ships as good as new and never have a ship sunken again.