Norwegian vessel will help SA manage oceans
A RESEARCH vessel, arguably the world’s most advanced, was scheduled to leave Durban last night on its first voyage up Africa’s south-east coast having made its way down the west coast of the continent, gathering and analysing samples.
Flying the UN flag, the Norwegian-based Dr Fridtjof Nansen, has a crew of sailors from the Scandinavian nation and operates in a partnership between Oslo and the global body’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
It aims to discover more about the oceans to help the managements of fisheries all over the world go about their business in a sustainable way.
“Many countries participating in the programme have no other marine data than that collected by the ship,” said Norwegian Ambassador Trine Skymoen at a ceremony on board the vessel in Durban harbour yesterday to mark the start of a nine-month survey along the south-east coast of Africa, the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal.
She said that the ship’s work was also to help find ways to meet the world’s increasing needs of more food, water, and transport that will all come from the ocean.
“Twenty-four hours ago at the World Economic Summit,” she said yesterday, “our prime minister launched a high-level panel on building sustainable oceans”.
The vessel, which has seven laboratories on board, is able to access great depths to gather samples and get video footage.
Also at the ceremony was Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Senzeni Zokwana. Sean Fennessy, senior scientist and assistant director at Durban’s Oceanographic Research Institute, who will be on the ship as it works the coast off northern KwaZulu-Natal, said it was seldom that a vessel like the Dr Fridtjof Nansen visited the area.
“It’s going to enable us to look at depths and parts of the seabed that have never been looked at before so certainly some biodiversity discoveries are expected.
“Maybe we’ll find some potential fish resources that are out there that we are not aware of. We’ll be looking for things like contamination in the water column, such as plastic, pollution.”
Fennessy is interested in crustaceans on the seabed. His colleagues, Fiona MacKay and Johan Groenewald, will be looking into creatures in the seabed and plankton respectively. “So it’s a great boost to increase our knowledge of the region,” said Fennessy.
A total of 45 people will be on board with Captain Aron Håpoldøy at the helm.
The vessel will then sail on to Tanzania, Seychelles, Mauritius and eventually, Thailand. There are no plans for it to return to its home port of Bergen, in Norway, in 20 years. Rather, her crew fly between home and whichever port she is in to work for five- to sixweek stints, said First Officer Asbjorn Austevoll.
Sailor Tor-Henrik Johansen flew into Durban’s humidity this week from his home town near the Arctic area of Norway where it had been -6ºC.
The ship is the third called the Dr Fridtjof Nansen to perform its function. It is named after a Norwegian explorer, scientist, and humanist who also became a Nobel Prize laureate for his work with refugees.