Carrying the hopes for a return to a rich and bountiful ocean, a new survey ship took to the sea on Feb. 15 to research what effect the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami had on the ecosystem off the Sanriku coast.
Carrying the hopes for a return to a rich and bountiful ocean, a new survey ship took to the sea on Feb. 15 to research what effect the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami had on the ecosystem off the Sanriku coast.
The launching ceremony was held at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd.’s Shimonoseki shipyard in Yamaguchi Prefecture, where the marine research vessel was christened the Shinsei Maru.
The ship slid into the sea, after elementary schoolgirl Natsumi Kawai cut the rope that held it.
The fifth-grader was invited from Otsuchi, Iwate Prefecture, a town that will become home to the new ship.
“I hope Sanriku will return to having a rich sea and recover (from the March 11, 2011, disaster),” the girl said.
Otsuchi Mayor Yutaka Ikarigawa added, “It brings hope to us in our devastated town.”
To help the revival of fisheries in the waters off Sanriku, the University of Tokyo’s Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute and the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) have been surveying the seabed topography and other elements there.
The Shinsei Maru, the successor to the Tansei Maru, which was retired in January, was built at a cost of about 11 billion yen ($120 million). The new 1,600-ton vessel is 2.5 times larger than the previous research vessel, and equipped with such tools as cutting-edge observational equipment and a remote-controlled unmanned probe.
Officials say they will conduct training with the ship from the summer to prepare for actual operations.
“This is the world’s most-advanced research vessel,” said Asahiko Taira, president of JAMSTEC, at the launch. “We will make good use of this to help the region's recovery.”