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NOAA AND VT Halter Marine launch second
fisheries survey vessel - Work Also Starts on Third Research Ship in
Series
(Note: It is a real shame that the activities of this ship and its
sister ships may well help stop all commercial fishing in U.S.
waters, as they follow INTERNATIONAL standards, i.e., U.N. Later on,
recreational/sport fishing will be shut down -- the old
divide-and-conquer ploy.)
July 8, 2005
Moss Point, Mississippi - VT Halter Marine, Inc. and NOAA http://www.noaa.gov today
launched the second of four planned NOAA fisheries survey vessels. The
ship was christened Henry B. Bigelow by Catherine Silver of
Winnacunnet High School in Hampton, New Hampshire, on behalf of the
ship's sponsor, Mrs. Judd Gregg, wife of the senior senator from New
Hampshire. The ship will be one of the most technologically advanced
fisheries survey vessels in the world when placed in operation in late
2006. (Click NOAA image for larger view of the NOAA ship Henry
B. Bigelow being launched at the VT Halter Marine Inc., shipyard in
Moss Point, Miss. Click
here for high resolution version. Please credit “NOAA.”)
Mrs. Gregg was unable to attend the ceremony at the shipyard in Moss Point, Mississippi, but designated Silver as her representative. Silver was the team leader of students from Winnacunnet High School who won a regional NOAA contest in 2004 to name the ship. The students also participated in the ship's keel laying ceremony in May 2004. The contest was an educational initiative to help students learn more about their region's marine and coastal environment as well as to generate a greater interest in scientific studies. "The christening of Henry B. Bigelow is a significant milestone in the modernization of our NOAA fleet," said retired Navy Vice Admiral Conrad C. Lautenbacher Jr., Ph.D., undersecretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator. "We appreciate the contribution Mrs. Gregg has made as the ship's sponsor and we are delighted that Ms. Silver was able to represent her, maintaining the close connection between the school and the vessel." (Click NOAA image for larger view of the NOAA ship Henry B. Bigelow being christened at the VT Halter Marine Inc., shipyard in Moss Point, Miss., by Catherine Silver of Winnacunnet High School in Hampton, N.H. Click here for high resolution version. Please credit “NOAA.”) "We would also like to thank Senators Gregg, Cochran and Lott and Congressman Taylor for helping us obtain the funds to build this important asset as we carry out NOAA's mission to assess and protect the nation's living marine resources. Henry B. Bigelow and its sister ships will provide higher quality data to fisheries managers about targeted fish populations and the environment that sustains them," added Lautenbacher. Henry B. Bigelow is the second of four planned 208-foot fisheries survey vessels to be built by VT Halter Marine that will either augment or replace aging ships in the NOAA fleet. Its capabilities will far exceed those of older NOAA ships. It has been built to meet specific data collection requirements of the NOAA Fisheries Service as well as to meet tough standards for a low acoustic signature set by the International Council for Exploration of the Seas. This feature will allow the ship to study fish quietly without altering their behavior. After calibration, the vessel will replace Albatross IV and will be home ported in New England. (Click NOAA image for larger view of the NOAA ship Henry B. Bigelow before being launched at the VT Halter Marine Inc., shipyard in Moss Point, Miss. Click here for high resolution version. Please credit “NOAA.”) Construction of the third fisheries survey vessel was kicked off Thursday at VT Halter Marine's Moss Point shipyard. The vessel's base cost exceeds $39 million. Approximately 150 VT Halter Marine employees will be working on the two NOAA ships over the next three years. This third research ship will be home ported in Pascagoula, Mississippi. "VT Halter Marine has a proven global track record of designing and constructing ships that meet our clients' specific requirements. We are delighted to be working with NOAA on this sophisticated new class of quiet fisheries survey vessels that will greatly increase NOAA's technical capabilities at sea," said Boyd E. King, CEO of VT Halter Marine, Inc. "Work began yesterday on the next ship in this class, which speaks positively of NOAA's confidence in our ability to meet their high performance standards." (Click NOAA image for larger view of the NOAA ship Henry B. Bigelow after being launched at the VT Halter Marine Inc., shipyard in Moss Point, Miss. Click here for high resolution version. Please credit “NOAA.”) The ship's namesake, Henry B. Bigelow, was a renowned oceanographer who worked as a researcher, instructor and professor of zoology at Harvard from 1906 to 1962. He was also a founder of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in 1931. Bigelow transformed the Gulf of Maine from a scientific unknown to one of the most thoroughly studied bodies of water in the world and developed the interdisciplinary, ecosystem-oriented approach that characterizes modern oceanography. Several grandchildren of Bigelow attended the ceremony today, including Frederick S. Bigelow Jr. of Pennington, New Jersey, who was a speaker. The NOAA fleet of research and survey ships and aircraft is operated, managed and maintained by NOAA Marine and Aviation Operations. NMAO includes commissioned officers of the NOAA Corps and civilians. The NOAA Corps is the nation's seventh and smallest uniformed service, and, as part of NOAA, is under the U.S. Department of Commerce. (Click NOAA image for larger view of the NOAA ship Henry B. Bigelow launch ceremony at the VT Halter Marine Inc., shipyard in Moss Point, Miss. Click here for high resolution version. Please credit “NOAA.”) VT Halter Marine is the marine operations of Vision Technologies Systems. Based in Pascagoula, Mississippi, more than 2,600 vessels have been built at its facilities in the United States. VT Halter Marine designs, builds and repairs a wide variety of ocean-going vessels such as patrol vessels, oil recovery vessels, oil cargo vessels, ferries, logistic support vessels and survey vessels. NOAA, an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, is dedicated to enhancing economic security and national safety through the prediction and research of weather and climate-related events and providing environmental stewardship of the nation's coastal and marine resources.
Relevant Web Sites
Media Contact:
Five photos of the new ship (3rd, 4th and 5th are very nice):
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2005/s2471.htm
Additional researched, recommended reading:
NOAA: Message from the Director http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/General/NODCPubs/FY1998AR.pdf (4-page pdf file) ===== GEO-2000: Chapter Two: The State of the Environment http://www.unep.org/geo2000/english/0082.htm ===== UNEP Global Environmental Outlook 2000 http://www1.unep.org/geo-text/0082.htm ===== International Council for Exploration of the Seas (Copenhagen, Denmark) "We work with an international community of over 1600 marine scientists from 19 member countries." "ICES is the organisation that coordinates and promotes marine research in the North Atlantic. We are an intergovernmental organisation and our 19 member countries are as follows: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Latvia, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America. Each of the member countries elects two "delegates" http://www.ices.dk/aboutus/delegates.asp who represent their country on the ICES Council. The ICES Council is the principal policy and decision-making body of ICES. There are also a number countries that have affiliate status with ICES. The Affiliate Countries are: Australia, Chile, Greece, New Zealand, Peru, and South Africa." http://www.ices.dk/aboutus/ourmembers.asp http://www.ices.dk/indexfla.asp GLOBEC (Global Ocean Ecosystem Dynamics) was initiated by SCOR and the IOC of UNESCO in 1991, to understand how global change will affect the abundance, diversity and productivity of marine populations comprising a major component of oceanic ecosystems. The aim of GLOBEC is to advance our understanding of the structure and functioning of the global ocean ecosystem, its major subsystems, and its response to physical forcing so that a capability can be developed to forecast the responses of the marine ecosystem to global change. http://www.ices.dk/globec/ [Note: Click on Links, then on Funding Agencies, to see a Who's Who of the global environmental 'protection' -- Control -- players.] GLOBEC Multinational Activities - GLOBEC has a very broad scope from small scale National Activities to Regional Programmes covering ocean basins. Multi-national programmes consist of several countries working together on a specific aim or area but do not cover sufficient geographical area to be considered Regional Programmes. At present there are 4 GLOBEC multi-national Activities. Click here to download the GLOBEC National, Multi-national and Regional Activities Report, 2001: Part 1 (229 Kb), Part 2 (356 Kb), Part 3 (498 Kb) BENEFIT draws on the work of scientists in Namibia, Angola and South Africa and from co-sponsor countries (Germany and Norway) to answer questions about the Benguela Current Ecosystem. ENVIFISH conducted a retrospective analysis of environmental and fisheries records from 1982 to 1999 and involved scientists from Italy, Angola, Namibia, South Africa, Germany, England, Norway and Portugal, ENVIFISH was completed in 2001. IDYLE aims to understand how the adaptive strategies of fish are structured by the presence of inshore upwelling and the resulting ecosystemic patterns. IDYLE is based in the Benguela and involves scientists from France, Namibia, Angola and South Africa. LIFECO was an EU funded programme enabling scientists from Denmark, Germany, Norway and the UK to work together to establish the links between frontal activity and ecosystem dynamics in the North Sea and Skagerrak and their importance to fish stock recruitment, the LIFECO programme was completed in 2003. NATFISH aims to analyse and quantify the influence of the natural variability of the Northwest African upwelling system on the abundance and distribution of small pelagics. NATFISH involves scientists from Italy, Norway, Morocco, Mauritania and Senegal. OFCCP will investigate the effect of climate change on the productivity and distribution of oceanic tuna stocks and fisheries in the Pacific Ocean with the goal of predicting short- to long-term changes and impacts related to climate variability and global warming. SARDYN investigates the stock structure and dynamics of the sardine population in the north-east Atlantic and involves scientists from Portugal, Spain, Greece, England, Norway and France. TASC involved scientists from Denmark, The Faroe Islands, France, Germany, Iceland, Norway and the UK in a study of Calanus finmarchicus in the Atlantic, the study was completed in 2001. ===== GCTE - Global Change and Terrestrial Ecosystems http://www.gcte.org ===== PAGES - Past Global Changes http://www.pages-igbp.org ===== Service Consolidation Actions of the EarthWatch GMES Services Element - Executive Summary (Note: Especially important: See 3.1 and do an Edit/Find search for the word "definition.") http://earth.esa.int/gmes/C1/CW_C1_Ph2_V3.0_23_06_04_final.pdf (38 pages) ===== Perspectives
on International Oceanographic Research File
Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View
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