SAN FRANCISCO, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Oregon State University (OSU) announced Thursday that it has received a grant of 121.88 million U.S. dollars to spearhead the construction of a new class of research vessels for the United States Academic Research Fleet.
The grant, the largest in the university's history, from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), will fund the construction of the first of three planned vessels approved by U.S. Congress for research in coastal regions of the continental United States and Alaska. The vessel is slated to be operated by OSU for research missions focusing on the U.S. West Coast.
When funding for the next two vessels is authorized, the total grant to OSU could increase to as much as 365 million dollars, said the university in the U.S. Pacific Northwest in a news release. The NSF will begin the competitive selection of operating institutions for the second and third vessels later this year, likely to universities or consortia for operations on the U.S. East Coast and the Gulf of Mexico.
OSU was selected by the NSF in 2013 to lead the initial design phase for the new vessels, and to develop and execute a competitive selection for a U.S. shipyard to do the construction. Gulf Island Shipyards, LLC, in Louisiana was chosen and will conduct the detailed design verification over the next year. Officials hope to have a keel-laying ceremony for the first vessel in 2018, with the ship delivered to OSU for a year of extensive testing in 2020.
"Rising sea levels, ocean acidification, low-oxygen waters or 'hypoxia,' declining fisheries, offshore energy, and the threat of catastrophic tsunamis are issues not only in the Pacific Northwest but around the world," Roberta Marinelli, dean of Oregon State's College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, was quoted as saying in the news release. "These new vessels will provide valuable scientific capacity for better understanding our changing oceans."
The ships will be equipped to conduct detailed seafloor mapping, to reveal geologic structures important to understanding processes such as subduction zone earthquakes that may trigger tsunamis. The Pacific Northwest is considered a high-risk region because of the Cascadia Subduction Zone, which has produced about two dozen major earthquakes of magnitude 8.0 or greater over the past 10,000 years.
They will also be equipped with advanced sensors that will be used to detect and characterize harmful algal blooms, changing ocean chemistry, and the interactions between the sea and atmosphere. The emerging fields of wave, tidal and wind energy will benefit from ship observations. OSU is the site of the Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Center, which in December was awarded a grant of up to 35 million dollars from the U.S. Department of Energy to create the world's premier wave energy test facility in Newport.
OSU is expected to begin operating the first new ship in the fall of 2021, after official Academic-Fleet designation by the University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System (UNOLS), according to Demian Bailey, a project co-leader for OSU.
The new ships, known as regional class research vessels, or RCRVs, will be 193 feet, or 58.8 meters, long, with range of about 7,000 nautical miles, cruising speed at 11.5 knots and a maximum speed of 13 knots, 16 berths for scientists and 13 for crew members. They have the ability to stay out at sea for at least 21 days before returning to port.
