High-Tech USCGC Healy To Explore & 3D Map Arctic Floor For Oil - With Video
When I was in the Coast Guard in the early 80’s we only had two Icebreakers, the Polar Sea and the Polar Star, you didn’t want that duty, sucks, no bad guys to chase down and shoot, or bikini-clad maidens in distress to save. This icebreaker is pretty new, having been commissioned in 2000. This thing has a crew of 75 and 50 are freaking scientists. Never heard of anything like that other than in NOAA, which is/was very closely related to the Coast Guard.
I’ve sailed the Arctic Ocean, not on an icebreaker but with my own unit, The Jarvis, crossed the Arctic Circle and was initiated into the Royal Order of the Polar Bear which is prestigious amongst sailors. I’m also a Golden Dragon, but that and $4.00 will get me a gallon of gas these days.Science systems and gear on this pig include a bottom mapping sonar system, an acoustic Doppler current profiler, a jumbo piston coring system, a continuous flow seawater sampling system, and a bow tower for clean air experiments. This thing is high-tech. I guarantee you the Russians don’t have anything like this.
Had to throw a pic of the Jarvis up. Sing it, bitches! “We all live a in a big white pig!” This thing is 378 ft and has twin jet (as in jet, you know, like on a jet plane? LOL) engines and when they fired up the birds this pig would do 35 knots. For you non-nautical types that’s a c*nt-hair shy of 50 MPH. Lemme tell ya, when you are on a pig like that doing 35 knots, it is freaking awesome.From The Telegraph:The US is sending a scientific expedition to explore the Arctic seabed, allowing it to gather data to build a claim to the region’s natural resources.A Coast Guard cutter will seek to determine the extent of the continental shelf north of Alaska and gather information on oil and gas deposits.The three-week voyage will create a three-dimensional map of the Arctic Ocean floor in a relatively unexplored area known as the Chukchi borderland.
A second expedition is also planned when the Coast Guard cutter Healy will be joined by Canadian scientists aboard an icebreaker, who will help collect data to determine the thickness of sediment in the region.
That is one factor a country can use to define its extended continental shelf. With oil at $114 a barrel, after hitting a record $147 in July, and sea ice melting fast, countries like Russia and the US are looking north for possible energy riches.
“These are places nobody’s gone before, in essence, so this is a first step,” said Margaret Hays, the director of the oceanic affairs office at the U.S. State Department. She said the data collected may provide information to the public about future oil and natural gas sources for the United States.
This will be the fourth year that the US has collected data to define the limits of its continental shelf in the Arctic.
Russia, which has claimed 460,000 square miles (1.19 million sq km) of Arctic waters, last summer planted its flag on the ocean floor of the North Pole.
Larry Mayer, a university scientist, said melting sea ice, presumably from global warming, helped last year’s mission. “It was bad for the Arctic, but very very good for mapping.”
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