 Multibeam echosounders are also commonly used for geological and oceanographic research, and since the 1990s for offshore oil and gas exploration and seafloor cable routing.In 1989, Atlas Electronics (Bremen, Germany) installed a second-generation deep-sea multibeam called Hydrosweep DS on the German research vessel Meteor.The Hydrosweep DS (HS-DS) produced up to 59 beams across a 90-degree swath, which was a vast improvement and was inherently ice-strengthened.