On October 5, the ship James Clark Ross entered Odessa port. This research vessel was purchased by Ukraine from Great Britain. The home port of the icebreaker is Odesa. This was reported by the administration of the Odessa seaport.
From now on, the James Clark Ross motor ship belongs to the National Antarctic Scientific Center of Ukraine. After passing all the necessary procedures for accepting the ship into the domestic scientific fleet and changing its name, the icebreaker will leave the ocean this year and head for Antarctica, in the direction of the Ukrainian polar station "Akademik Vernadsky".
According to the Director of the National Antarctic Scientific Center Yevgeny Dykyi, the presence of such a vessel, adapted to work in low temperature conditions, allows to significantly expand the range of scientific research. In fact, it is a floating institute with eight specialized laboratories and devices for taking any samples from a depth of up to 8 km. That is, almost 90% of the bottom of the world ocean becomes available to our researchers.
At the time of its construction, the James Clark Ross was one of the top 3 best scientific vessels in the world. And even now, 30 years later, the ship is still in the top 20. Having acquired this icebreaker, Ukraine will return to the club of states with a developed infrastructure for scientific research in the world ocean and polar latitudes.
According to Dykiy, the amount of 5 million dollars allocated by the Cabinet of Ministers for the purchase of an icebreaker is, by and large, symbolic for a vessel of this class. By the way, this is already the second case of transfer of research assets to the United Kingdom of Ukraine. In 1996, for 1 pound sterling, our country was given the Antarctic station "Faraday", which is now called "Akademik Vernadsky".
Information: James Clark Ross was built by Swan Hunter Shipbuilders in Wallsend and launched in 1990. Queen Elizabeth II took part in the naming ceremony. The icebreaker was named in honor of James Clark Ross, a British military sailor and researcher who in the middle of the XNUMXth century on the ships "Terror" and "Erebus" made the most extensive expedition to the Antarctic at that time, and later participated in the search for the missing expedition of Franklin in the Arctic.
The vessel has been in service in the fleet of the British Antarctic Service since 1991. In particular, James Clark Ross took part in the first international study on the assessment of krill stocks in the southern part of the Atlantic Ocean. The obtained data are still used in krill estimation models.
