10 minute read
Nuyina
Our ship of the future
With a dazzling array of highly sophisticated instruments, the $1.9 billion Antarctic research vessel RSV Nuyina will provide Australian scientists with unprecedented access to the Earth’s last great wilderness – the frozen continent where global warming is fast eroding ancient glaciers and unleashing sea-level rises with potentially catastrophic consequences for the entire planet. Bruce Stannard reports on the extraordinary capabilities of Australia’s three-in-one super-ship.
HISTORIC HOBART has seen a great many ships come and go over the years, but it’s safe to say that none has been as profoundly important to the future of the planet as the 160-metre icebreaker Nuyina. With a price tag of $1.9 billion, the newly built Nuyina represents Australia’s biggest-ever investment in science. This is in itself a clear indication of just how seriously we now take the search for answers to what must surely be the most pressing questions of this over-reach age. Oceans cover 70 per cent of the Earth’s surface and although they bear many different names, each is connected to the others in a vast network of global currents that govern our climate and directly influence life on Earth. With human-induced climate change and global warming already responsible for melting billions of tonnes of ice from the hitherto frozen waters of the Arctic, urgent attention is now focused on the impact of unprecedented warming in Antarctic waters. In Antarctica, where Australia has long maintained three important scientific bases, ancient glaciers are now melting and calving enormous icebergs at an alarming rate. Should that disastrous trend continue – and all the indications are that it will – global sea-levels are expected to rise to heights unprecedented in the modern era. As a result, major coastal cities and low-lying island populations throughout the world will very likely face catastrophic inundation and disruption on a scale that will dwarf any other event in recent human history.
The name Nuyina was chosen by school children. Pronounced ‘noy-yee-nah’, it is a Tasmanian Aboriginal term for the Aurora Australis. Image Damen/ Australian Antarctic Division
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The 25,000 tonne Nuyina is therefore arriving on the very cusp of this fast-developing emergency. She will be three state-of-the-art vessels in one: an exceptionally powerful icebreaker, a cutting-edge scientific research platform and a robust supply ship, providing a 30-year lifeline for three stations in the Antarctic as well as our sub-Antarctic World Heritage Wilderness, Macquarie Island and the remote Heard and McDonald islands. Nuyina represents a quantum leap in the Australian Antarctic Division’s scientific capability, a boost that will greatly enhance its well-established international reputation as the world’s foremost Antarctic research organisation. After 10 years of meticulous planning and design, and three years in construction at the Damen Group’s vast shipyard in Galati, Romania, in August 2020 Nuyina was towed 6,800 kilometres to Vlissingen in the Netherlands for interior fit-out and to complete a program of trials. Nuyina is now, without doubt, the most advanced scientific research vessel in the southern hemisphere. While Nuyina and her scientific crew will not be able to mitigate the enormous changes under way in Antarctica, they will certainly be able to use the ship’s vast array of highly sophisticated equipment to explore and monitor those changes, predicting and providing some warning of when and where they may occur. To share some of the excitement of Nuyina’s capabilities, here is a brief guided tour of the ship, starting at the stern and going forward.
Science deck and labs
Sheltered beneath the helicopter landing pad, the afterdeck can support almost every conceivable scientific activity. A large A-frame at the stern and different winches and lifting gear can be used to deploy fishing nets and dredges, robotic vehicles, mooring systems, cameras and sediment corers.
Propulsion For silent operations Nuyina has two electric motors (7,400 kW total) powered by diesel generators. These can be coupled with two 16-cylinder diesel engines to provide maximum power for ice-breaking (19,200 kW total). Two 50-metre-long propeller shafts connect the main engines and electric motors to the 40-tonne propellers at the stern.
Moon pool The ‘moon pool’ housed amidships is a 13-metre vertical shaft running from the science deck to the open ocean. Equipment such as the CTD (Conductivity, Temperature and Depth) instrument, nets and robotic vehicles can be deployed through it, even when the ship is in sea ice. The CTD is a workhorse of oceanography that collects water samples from different depths. These provide information about the changes in the ocean’s salinity, temperature, nutrients and plankton.
01 RSV Nuyina captured during its first trial voyage in the North Sea in December 2020. Image Flying Focus 02 Designer Lynda Warner created this limited issue of four Australian Antarctic Territory stamps, issued in September 2020. Image Australia Post
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ROVs
The Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) are also housed amidships. These are connected to the ship and powered via an umbilical cord. They can be used to explore the underside of sea ice for krill and the sea ice algae that they feed on.
AUVs
Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) are programmed to work independently under sea ice or deep beneath ice shelves. They can carry a range of instruments for different purposes, such as mapping the sea floor or under-ice surfaces and measuring water properties.
Wet well
Nuyina’s unique ‘wet well’ is a watertight space beneath the waterline, which can process up to 5,000 litres of seawater per minute, piped from large inlets in the ship’s hull. The water feeds into large viewing tanks and ‘filter tables’, which allow aquarists to collect krill and fragile organisms such as jellyfish, in perfect condition.
Drop keels Nuyina has two drop keels that can be lowered three metres beneath the vessel about amidships. They house acoustic instruments that use sound to create images of the ocean environment to map the sea floor or measure the amount of krill or fish in the water. They also contain a hydrophone system to record marine mammal calls. Nuyina can carry 1,200 tonnes of cargo in up to 96 20-foot shipping containers. One of the two cargo holds can accommodate vehicles, including Hagglund snow tractors, LARC amphibious vehicles, rough terrain vehicles and Quadtracs. As befits a ship of this size and purpose, Nuyina carries a series of smaller support craft. The 10.3-metre Science Tender, housed on the port side just aft of amidships, can carry up to six people and 500 kilograms of cargo. It has a moon pool to deploy instruments through the hull and an A-frame to deploy towed instruments. There are also two personnel transfer tenders and a stern tender that operates as a safety vessel whenever the helicopter takes off and lands from the helipad. Two 16.3-metre × 6.2-metre aluminium barges deployed by cranes are housed on the foredeck to transport up to 45 tonnes of cargo in ship-to-shore operations. The fisheries sonar, controlled and monitored from the science operation room and the bridge, uses pulses of sound to detect schools of fish, krill or other marine organisms in the water column around the ship.
Oceans cover 70 per cent of Earth in a vast network of global currents that govern our climate and directly influence life on Earth
Ship’s details
Length 160.3 metres Beam 25.6 metres Maximum draught 9.3 metres Displacement 235,500 tonnes Ice-breaking Travelling at a speed of 3 knots (5.5 km/h), the ship can break through ice up to 1.65 metres thick Speed 12 knots cruising, 16+ knots max Range 16,000 nautical miles Endurance 90 days Cargo fuel capacity 1,671 tonnes Container capacity 96 TEU Cargo weight 1,200 tonnes Passengers 116
01 Nuyina features both a resupply deck and – when seas permit – a helipad for ship-to-shore movements. Image Flying Focus 02 Kim Ellis has visited Antarctica multiple times. Image Australian Antarctic Division 01
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Look south to see the future
The Australian Antarctic Division’s Director, Kim Ellis, has visited Antarctica several times over the last 40 years without ever losing the palpable sense of excitement and awe he feels for the frozen continent and its many wonders. ‘It’s just the most exciting place,’ he said. ‘The preservation of this incredibly important, pristine piece of landscape is vital to Australia’s national interests because what happens in Antarctica affects all of us. It’s just so precious. And although we tend to focus on the charismatic megafauna – the great blue whales, the vast colonies of emperor penguins, the magnificent wandering albatross and so on – there is just so much going on down there at every level. Our scientists also spend a lot of time researching phytoplankton, the smallest gelatinous creatures on the planet.’ Mr Ellis laments that very few people realise that Australia has had such a long and enduring history in Antarctic. ‘In the 2017 Antarctic season,’ he said, ‘we celebrated the 70th anniversary of the Australian Antarctic Program. That’s quite an achievement for a young country. People don’t realise that Douglas Mawson claimed almost 42 per cent of Antarctica for Australia and while those claims are on hold because of the Antarctic Treaty arrangements, Antarctica is in fact our southern border. Although we put an awful lot of energy into looking north, as a nation we really should be investing the same amount of energy into looking south because that is where our national interest lies. It is incredibly important. It affects our weather and the Southern Ocean is an extraordinary resource, not just for food but also for the future of alternative energy: wave energy and tidal energy.’ Mr Ellis points out that Australia continues to play a very strong international leadership role in the consensusbased Antarctic Treaty system which is, he says, one of the world’s oldest, most enduring and most effective treaty systems. The Treaty has, he says, kept Antarctic peaceful, focusing on science and cooperation since it began in 1991. ‘For a small country,’ he said, ‘we punch well above our weight. We are highly influential in the Treaty process. We were one of the founding parties that developed it back in the 1950s and we have maintained that very strong role. We have the history. We have the interest. This is part of our region of influence and we need to be prominent and confident in it.’ Kim Ellis has seen his fair share of blizzards in Antarctica and raging seas in the Southern Ocean. ‘It’s an interesting thing about nature,’ he says. ‘No matter how strong and powerful human beings think they are, it only takes one great storm to make us realise just how incredibly small we really are. That is an important realisation and Antarctica reinforces that every day. This is why cooperation between a whole range of nations is so important down there. Earlier this year I spent three months in Antarctica undertaking a treaty inspection tour in which we travelled 10,000 kilometres to visit 17 different research stations, including all of our own. Compliance and due diligence are what makes the treaty system work. It prevents individual nations breaching the articles of the treaty. Is it perfect? Probably not, but this treaty system is pretty good and I have a high level of confidence that in most cases it is being complied with.’ Mr Ellis is certain that Nuyina will allow the Division to make a quantum leap in its scientific capability in Antarctica. ‘The ship will allow us to take our scientists and their equipment into places that have been way beyond our operational limits,’ he said. ‘We will be able to stay out there for much longer and get out to very remote places like Heard Island and McDonald Island [between Madagascar and Antarctica]. It’s all very exciting.’
Bruce Stannard AM is a renowned maritime author and a Life Member of the Australian National Maritime Museum.
