Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE) has informed that the marine research vessel Aranda will be renovated to meet the needs of future marine research in the Baltic Sea.

According to SYKE, the renovation reduces the vessel’s operating costs, increases its energy efficiency and reduces its emissions. At the same time, the vessel’s modernisation makes it the Finnish marine industry’s flagship of competence in the design and construction of special-purpose vessels.

The planning of the renovation begins this year, and it will continue until next year. The actual renovation will occur in 2017 - 2018, during which the vessel will be out of operation for approximately six months.

Aranda, which was deployed in 1989, no longer meets the needs of modern marine research. The requirements on vessels and particularly the instruments suitable for multidisciplinary, year-round research have developed rapidly over the last few decades.

“The aim of modernising the vessel’s research equipment is to ensure the high quality of Finnish marine research, even at the international level, and to improve the modifiability of the equipment for different research purposes. In addition, the goal is to make communication at sea more efficient and diversified in order to meet the needs of the real-time reporting of experiments and research carried out at sea,” says Senior Adviser Jukka Pajala from the Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE).

The goal of renovating Aranda is to reduce the vessel’s operating costs by investing in energy-efficient, low-emission solutions, which also makes it possible to use the vessel in researching low-emission fuels and other emissions from vessels. Another objective of the renovation is to highlight and strengthen the competence and competitiveness of Finnish companies with regard to the vessels’ production and use of energy, marine robotics, satellite communications, underwater acoustics and laboratory equipment. After its renovation, Aranda will act as the Finnish marine industry’s flagship for construction of special-purpose vessels.

In the future, Aranda’s missions will be mainly related to the physical, chemical-biological, meteorological and geological study of the Baltic Sea. In addition, the vessel will be increasingly used for teaching purposes.

The vessel is an important part of the Finnish Marine Research Infrastructure consortium FINMARI, coordinated by SYKE; the Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE), the Finnish Meteorological Institute, the University of Helsinki, the University of Turku, the Åbo Akademi University, the Geological Survey of Finland and the Natural Resources Institute Finland are a part of the consortium. All of these research organisations utilise Aranda in their own marine research, and the vessel is also used by other research organisations in the Baltic Sea region, such as the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI).