The largest research vessel designed and constructed in Taiwan with a funding from the National Science Council, named as Ocean Researcher V, was officially commissioned to the National Applied Research Laboratories (NARL) on August 10, 2012.
This blue-water research vessel has been fitted out with a range of scientific equipment that promise to contribute to new insights most prominently in deep-sea natural resources, earthquakes and geodynamics, climate change and ocean biodiversity in Taiwan’s marine territories, that is approximately five times the size of the country's land area. One of the vessel’s first tasks in her maiden voyage is to assist the Central Weather Bureau to uphold underwater cables of Taiwan's earthquake monitoring system off the coast of eastern Taiwan so to improve the precision of earthquake predictions.
As Taiwan’s fourth research vessel, Ocean Researcher V has a perpendicular length of 72.6 meters, a molded breadth of 15.4 meters, and a deadweight of 2,700 tons. The vessel is capable of spending 250 days a year at sea, supporting basic and applied research across a range of disciplines. Each voyage will be able to accommodate 18 crew members and 30 scientists, and can go to sea for up to 50 days and cover 13,000 nautical miles (ca. 24,000 km).
The vessel’s electricity-ba
The hull design and structural strength of Ocean Researcher V enhance the vessel to slice cleanly through the gale force winds and waves associated with the northeast monsoon. This feature renders Ocean Researcher V to overcome the vessel operating restrictions during winter months when the northeast monsoon prevails. It also allows making up a deficiency of winter hydrologic data due to the fact that Taiwan’s three other smaller, still operating research vessels could not sail in the winter months.
Among many state-of-the-art instrumentations on board, the multibeam sonar system and multi-channel seismic detection system can deliver precision hydrographic and topographic data, improve profiling accuracy, create three-dimensional maps, and detect pressure perturbation caused by the seafloor motion in a swath of the seafloor many kilometers wide. Moreover, a tethered 3,000-meter-class remotely operated vehicle on Ocean Researcher V is equipped with a high-resolution underwater camera, a high-definition TV camera and multi-function free-moving manipulators arms for close-up investigation and collection of rock samples from the ocean bottom up to a 3,000-meter deep to locate seafloor energy sources.
In the past, explorations of this nature around Taiwan were carried out by the foreign large-size research vessels that led to a discovery of significant deposits of methane hydrate under sediments on the ocean floors about 500-3,000 meter deep of the continental slope in southwest of Taiwan. In the near future, Ocean Researcher V is to continue further explorations for tapping this alternative energy source.
Ocean Researcher V will be operated and managed by the NARL’s Taiwan Ocean Research Institute. The information acquired from Ocean Researcher V will be uploaded to Taiwan’s Marine Environmental Databank, which provides oceanographic data products and services to scientists, engineers, resource managers, policy makers, and other users in the country.
Apart from onboard research activities, Ocean Researcher V will serve as a platform in promoting human capacity building in the field of integrated ocean management and supporting the training of young scientists in marine science and technology. Thus Ocean Researcher V will provide a step-change in blue-water research capability available to Taiwan’s marine research community. This growth of Taiwan’s ocean research capacity will also bring increased opportunities for participation in important international marine research programs.
