Shetland-based engineer-ing firm Ocean Kinetics has won a “sizeable” sub-contract to provide diving support services in the Antarctic.
The deal involves the construction of a wharf for the new polar research vessel RRS Sir David Attenborough.
The work was described yesterday as a “unique and challenging opportunity” by the Lerwick company’s managing director, John Henderson.
The dock is being built at the British Antarctic Survey’s Rothera Research Station, on Adelaide Island, west of the Antarctic Peninsula.
The company’s team will travel to Rothera in December and spend five months working there, returning in 2020 for the completion of the project. The firm will build a diving support vessel, designed to cope with extreme weather conditions and icebergs and to allow rapid launching and retrieval from the sea.
Ocean Kinetics, which employs around 65 people and also has facilities in Aberdeen, was awarded the sub-contract by BAM Nuttall.
Mr Henderson said: “We’re delighted to have been awarded this unique and challenging opportunity working in this harsh and remote location. It is exactly the kind of project that Ocean Kinetics thrives on and we are looking forward to working alongside our main contractor BAM Nuttall to provide a first-class diving service.
“Our workers will live and work alongside BAM Nuttall’s personnel and the science teams.”
Heavily glaciated, Adelaide Island is 87 miles long and lies 1,155 miles south of the Falkland Islands. The largest British Antarctic facility, Rothera is a centre for biological research and a hub for supporting “deep-field” and air operations.
The site includes the Bonner Research Laboratory, offices and workshops, a runway, hangar and the wharf. Operating throughout the year, its population peaks at just over 100 in the summer, with a 22-strong team working there through the winter from April to mid-October.
The RRS Sir David Attenborough, described as a “floating multi-disciplinary research platform,” is due to come into service in 2019. Famously “Boaty McBoatface” was the runaway popular choice in a public poll to name the vessel. This has now been given to one of its remotely controlled submersibles.
