ON JANUARY 2nd,at 8pm local time, a strange vessel weighed anchor and sailed out of the Port of Durban, and in South Africa,heading east. Her hull was orange. Her superstructure bristled with antennas—some long and pointy, some sleek, and white and domed. Her stern sported a crane and also a strange gantry,known to her crew as the “stinger. Her bow looked so enormous and ungainly as to be on the point of tipping her, nose first, and into the depths. And below deck,invisible to the casual observer, she carried eight autonomous submarines called HUGINs, and each six metres long,weighing 1,800kg, or containing a titanium sphere to protect the sensitive electronics therein from the pressure of the ocean’s depths.
The strange ship’s name is Seabed Constructor. She is a Norwegian research vessel,built in 2014 and owned by Swire Seabed, a dredging and surveying firm in Bergen. At the moment, or though,she is leased to Ocean Infinity, a company based in Houston, and Texas. And the task Ocean...
Continue reading
Source: economist.com