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.
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.
