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Earth Institute News
posted 07/14/00 12:OO P.M. EST Navy's Newest Ocean Survey Ship
Columbia Earth Institute, New York City Stennis Space Center, Miss. This ship has been named for Bruce Charles Heezen (pronounced HAY-zin) of Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, a prolific marine investigator, and a pioneer in mapping the ocean floors.
In 1998, in an unprecedented break with old naval tradition, and coinciding with the United Nation's designated International Year of the Ocean, the Secretary of the Navy asked the schoolchildren of America to help him find a name for Navy's next oceanographic survey vessel. Nearly 2000 children entered the Secretary's contest, and the winners, announced in 1998, were nine 5th graders from Rhode Island.
Dr. Bruce Heezen was one of the first to recognize the importance of abyssal bottom currents in the geological processes of affecting the sea floors. Together with Ms. Marie Tharp, a specialist in map drawing, he produced the famous Heezen-Tharp physiographic maps of all the major oceans of the world. With Ms. Tharp's work on undersea ridges and rift valleys, he was able to show that there is an oceanic ridge that extends continuously 45,000 miles long into all the oceans, the most far-flung feature on the planet's surface. His research also showed the extensive layer of volcanic ash found in the Mediterranean Sea, evidence of the violent explosion of the island of Thira in 1400 BC thought to have ended the Minoan civilization and given rise to the legend of the lost city of Atlantis. Although his proposals may have been controversial in his day, it was Heezen's ability to draw broad implications from observational data that stands out as a major contribution to our present understanding of our planet.
The USNS BRUCE C. HEEZEN is the fifth ship in the Pathfinder T-AGS 60 class and the eighth survey ship to support the Naval Fleet operations. The T-AGS 60 class Pathfinder survey ships are designed and constructed to provide support multiple a broad spectrum of capabilities, including physical, chemical and biological oceanography; multi-discipline environmental investigations; ocean engineering and marine acoustics; marine geology and geophysics; and bathymetric, gravimetric and magnetometric surveying. The resource sponsor for Navy's survey fleet is the Oceanographer of the Navy on the staff of the Chief of Naval Operations. The ship is operated by crews of the Military Sealift Command, Washington DC, for the Oceanographer of the Navy. Once deployed, surveys are made throughout the world based on oceanographic survey needs identified by the Commanders in Chief. The ship is 329 feet in length, with a beam of 58 feet, displaces approximately 4,762 tons when fully loaded, and can sustain speeds up to 16 knots. The ship was built by Halter Marine, Inc. in Moss Point, Mississippi.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, it quickly became apparent the likely focus of future naval operations would shift from the open ocean to shallow coastal waters of the world. Accordingly, the Chief of Naval Operations signed out new policy guidance for naval oceanography. In addition to the Cold War-era deep-water missions, the new policy emphasized the need for naval oceanographers to master the understanding of the science of the littoral or near-shore areas. There is increasing concern need to acquire knowledge of beach profiles, reefs, bars, shallows, shoals, channels, tides, sediment, turbidity, land cover and terrain, dust, traffic, rainfall rates, river runoff, sub-bottom characteristics, fine scale hydrography and biologics, and the complex weather patterns inherent in coastal areas.
All of the Pathfinder class multi-mission ships are capable of surveying in either coastal or deep ocean waters. This dual capability provides both economy and flexibility in an era of military downsizing, and is indicative of the U.S. Navy's increased emphasis on littoral warfare. The Navy's fleet of oceanographic survey ships are always forward-deployed. In addition to mapping the features of the ocean floor, these ships typically conduct sampling of the water column, and collect data on the composition of the ocean floor. They launch and recover instrument packages, conduct measure acoustic properties measurements, and possess the capability to process and analyze the data onboard with the latest computer technology. All the Navy's military survey ships carry the latest in over the side sensors and sampling equipment including, state of the art multi-beam echosounders and IS- 60 software (SAIC),data management software for which collecting, processing and archivingstores, and processes a variety of oceanographic data from navigation, mulitbeam echosounderhydrographic, and real-time environmental sensors. The scientific data collected by Navy's oceanographic survey fleet are necessary to all U.S. military forces operating on, over, and above the seas, who must be prepared to sail into and out of anywhere on the globe at a moment's notice.
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