The big day is here: RV Investigator’s Welcome to Port
Posted: December 12, 2014 Filed under: Home, Investigator, Marine National Facility | Tags: Australia's Marine National Facility, RV Investigator, welcome to port 3 Comments
RV Investigator will be formally commissioned in Hobart today.
The day has finally arrived: our new 94 metre, A$120 million research vessel (RV) Investigator will be commissioned in Hobart today.
This marks Investigator’s transition from being a CSIRO ship building and commissioning project to being Australia’s new Marine National Facility ship, ready to embark on its maiden voyage in March 2015.
You may have noticed we’ve been making quite a bit of fuss about the Investigator recently. Here’s three* good reasons why.
First of all, she’s good news for Tasmania. Between them, Investigator and the Marine National Facility pump somewhere between $7 million and $11 million a year into the local economy. In the last ten years Hobart has become a marine and Antarctic science hub. CSIRO’s Oceans and Atmosphere Flagship and the University of Tasmania’s $45 million Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS) headquarters are located there, along with a large number of other marine and Antarctic bodies. Investigator will enhance this.
Secondly, she’s good news for Australia in general. We will be using the expanded scientific capability of the Investigator to work on projects that are specifically selected to benefit our nation, like:
- helping increase aquaculture productivity,
- giving us a better understanding of the dominant role of the ocean in weather and climate variability,
- revolutionising fisheries science and management, and
- providing a greater understanding of the changing dynamics of the ocean floor (such as the movement of tectonic plates, which can trigger tsunamis).
And third, as Federal Industry Minister the Hon. Ian Macfarlane MP explains, she brings greater capacity to do research across Australia’s marine territory. For example, we know more about the surface of the moon than we do about our deepest oceans, and only 12% of the ocean floor within Australia’s Exclusive Economic Zone has so far been mapped. With the Investigator we will now be able to map the ocean floor to any depth, search for resources, better understand our fisheries, collect weather data 20km into the atmosphere and much more.
Now that we’ve covered off the broad strokes, it’s time to take a closer look at the ship itself! First, check out this cool time lapse video of Investigator being built, from beginning to end:
And once you’re finished with that, take a tour inside:
She’s an awesome sight. If you’re in Hobart this afternoon, be sure to come down and check out the official Welcome to Port event. We’d love to see you!
*An extra super bonus reason we love the Investigator? Nautical puns.
RV Investigator’s maiden voyage southward bound
Posted: December 12, 2014 Filed under: Home, Investigator, Marine National Facility, Media Releases | Tags: Australia's Marine National Facility, RV Investigator Leave a commentMarine National Facility media release, 12 December 2014
Today at the Welcome to Port Celebrations in Hobart, Investigator will transition from being a CSIRO ship building and commissioning project to being Australia’s new Marine National Facility ship ready to embark on its maiden voyage in March 2015.
The Chair of the Marine National Facility (MNF) Steering Committee, Dr Ian Poiner, said the maiden voyage is a collaboration involving the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre, the Integrated Marine Observing System, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and the University of Tasmania’s Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, and will be led by Professor Tom Trull.
“Professor Trull’s research will continue to contribute to the global understanding of the Southern Ocean, which plays a dominant role in the movement of heat throughout the world’s oceans as it moderates the Earth’s weather, its variability, and rate of change,” Dr Poiner said.
“The voyage will redeploy the Integrated Marine Observing System’s Southern Ocean Time Series and Southern Ocean Flux Station moorings, reestablishing essential monitoring infrastructure providing time series measurements critical for our understanding of the Southern Ocean.”
“In a time of global interest in the Southern Ocean, this voyage will reinforce Australia’s research investment in the region, and will help us better understand this vast ocean’s influence on weather and rainfall in Australia and globally.”
“The 94 metre Investigator is capable of 10,000 nautical miles, or 60 days in a single voyage, and the maiden voyage is the first on which Australian researchers will have access to an enviable suite of scientific equipment that will dramatically improve Australia’s national marine knowledge, putting our country at the forefront of marine research internationally.”
“The MNF Steering Committee is very excited about managing the $120 million ship on behalf of the nation and enabling research crucial to managing our vast ocean estate,” Dr Poiner said.
“Research enabled by the MNF contributes to Australia’s national benefit, and informs government and industry to support decision making in fisheries management, geological resources, regional and global climate, coastal and offshore developments and marine operations.”
“Australia has the third largest marine jurisdiction globally, with sovereign rights over much of this vast estate and associated fishing, biotechnological, mineral, and petroleum resources.”
“These resources and their associated industries contribute to the vitality and sustained success of the Australian economy, in 2009 the national value of production across all marine-based industries was valued at AUD$ 42.3 billion, contributing to more than 10 per cent of GDP.
A full list of voyages for the next three years is available on the Marine National Facility website www.mnf.csiro.au
Investigator goes to sea, to see what it can (3-D) see
Posted: December 11, 2014 Filed under: Home, Investigator, Marine National Facility, Media Releases | Tags: 3-D mapping, Investigator, sea bed mapping, sea floor mapping, Southern Surveyor, welcome to port Leave a comment
By Hannah Scott
Tomorrow will mark the official Welcome to Port for the new research vessel, Investigator – however science success is already happening on board!
Over the last few weeks hydrographers on board the Investigator have created the first 3-D images to come from the vessel of the ocean floor around Tasmania: and the results are spectacular.
The impressive ship is equipped with sonar that will map the sea floor in 3-D to any depth, and a sub-bottom profiling system that can look further up to 100 metres into the actual sea bed, to determine its composition.
The team responsible have been setting out 120 nautical miles north east and south east of Hobart to test and calibrate a range of equipment and the sea floor data is being collected as they go.
An area of sea floor mapped by the Investigator recently.
While there have previously been images of Tasmania’s surrounding sea floor collected in sections, the Investigator has allowed the data to be collected at a higher resolution than ever before. To put this into perspective, the sonar on the previous research vessel, Southern Surveyor, operated to 3000 metres and the Investigator can map in detail to any ocean depth.
Investigator has recently undertaken sea trials off the coast of Tasmania to test and calibrate around $20 million worth of scientific equipment in preparation for research voyages in 2015.
The Welcome to Port Celebrations for RV Investigator will be held on the CSIRO Wharf at Battery Point, Hobart, on Friday 12 December 2014, which will mark the official handover of the ship from CSIRO to the Marine National Facility for operation.
The public are invited to come down to the CSIRO Wharf from 3pm to 8pm, where there will be science education activities for all ages, science equipment on display and the chance to win a ship tour of RV Investigator. The event is free.
Fast facts about RV Investigator
Posted: May 10, 2014 Filed under: Fast Fact!, Investigator | Tags: Investigator, RV Investigator 2 Comments
Investigator looking fabulous during her sea trials.
Australia has one of the world’s largest marine territories, much of which remains unexplored, with only one blue-water research vessel available to our marine research community. Here’s five facts about the new Marine National Facility research vessel, Investigator.
- The ship was given the name Investigator after a national naming competition by 10-year-old student Clare Cameron and PhD student Kirrily Moore.
- Investigator will be capable of spending 300 days a year at sea, each voyage will be able to accommodate up to 40 scientists.
- The vessel is 93.9 metres, replacing the 66-metre vessel Southern Surveyor.
- Investigator will be capable of operating continuously for 60 days at sea, cruising at 12 knots over a range of 10 000 nautical miles in a single voyage.
The new vessel will operate from the tropical north to the Antarctic ice-edge and across the Indian, Southern, and Pacific oceans, greatly improving our capacity to investigate and understand marine geological processes, detect and predict changes in the ocean environment and their implications for weather and climate and characterise and manage marine ecosystems, biodiversity and fisheries.
Late last year Investigator was moved from the wharf at the Sembawang Shipyard, in Singapore, into the water. The skidding took several days, as the hydraulic system used to move the ship across the wharf only moves at a snail’s pace, taking minutes to move just millimetres.
RV Investigator looking switched on!
Posted: March 13, 2013 Filed under: Home, Investigator, The Future Research Vessel Project | Tags: Australia's Marine National Facility, engines, power supply, RV Investigator, Switchboard room Leave a commentA lot of work has been going on inside RV Investigator and you won’t believe the changes. Check out these photos of the switchboard room, which is looking pretty switched on!
This is the room where the electricity generated by the diesel engines and their alternators gets distributed around the ship to power absolutely everything.
On Investigator each engine can theoretically generate 2.88 megawatts of power so with all three running we can theoretically generate about 9 megawatts of power.
To give this some perspective, the average Australian household consumes 18 kilowatt (kW) hours each day.
Using this as a basis, let’s say each house consumes 18kW at any instant, therefore 9MW divided by 18kW means we could power 500 average Australian homes comfortably.
So we could power a small suburb or a country town!
Take a bow… block 201 is lifted into place!
Posted: March 11, 2013 Filed under: Home, Investigator, The Future Research Vessel Project | Tags: Australia's Marine National Facility, bow of the ship, Future Research Vessel Project, gondola, LEGO Investigator, RV Investigator 4 CommentsRV Investigator’s block 201, the bow of the ship at the deck level, has been completed and lifted into place.
This is an enormous block, which had to be constructed in smaller sections, assembled on the wharf, and then lifted into place.
Only the gondola is yet to be fitted to the hull of the ship.
How incredible does Investigator look now!
RV Investigator’s gondola nears completion
Posted: March 8, 2013 Filed under: Home, Investigator, The Future Research Vessel Project | Tags: Australia's Marine National Facility, Future Reserach Vessel Project, gondola, RV Investigator, seafloor, sub bottom profiler, swath map Leave a commentRV Investigator’s gondola is nearing completion and so too is the section in the hull of the ship where it will be attached.
The gondola will house several important acoustic instruments, including two swath mappers, to map the seafloor. One operates to a depth of about 500 metres and will be used on the shelf and the upper slope for very high-resolution maps. The other is a full ocean-depth mapper, which is able to map at depths of 7 kilometres and about 15 kilometres either side of the ship.
The gondola will also contain a sub-bottom profiler that can determine the make-up of the seafloor. A signal coming from this equipment can penetrate to around 25 metres into sand and about 100 metres in loose sediments.
Here are the latest photos showing the gondola in the fabrication shed and the part of the hull of the ship, where the gondola will be attached. 
