Research vessel · homeport Kochi

RV Sounding

Sixty-four metres, built in 2011, and at sea for about two hundred days a year. She is not a large ship. She is a ship with one very good hole in the middle of her and a crane over it.

Length: 64 m
Crew: 22
Scientists: 14
Endurance: 35 d
ROV rating: 7,000 m

Aboard

Multibeam echosounder
Full ocean depth, metre resolution at 3,000 m.
ROV Kestrel
Rated to 7,000 m. Two manipulators, oil-filled lighting.
CTD rosette
24 bottles, conductivity, temperature and depth on every cast.
Piston corer
Six metres of sediment, which is a few thousand years on most slopes.
Bait lander
Free-falling, no tether. The only way to see what comes to a carcass.

What she can reach

Twilight200 m

Midnight1,000 m

Abyssal4,000 m

Hadal6,000 m

7,000 mROV limit

Sunlight, 0 to 200 m, is the band at the top too thin to letter.

Seven thousand metres covers the abyssal plain and the shallower trenches. The bottom of the hadal zone stays out of reach, which is most of what is left unseen.