Coastal Tugboat: Vessel of Opportunity

Understanding emergent phenomena like ocean acidification and hypoxia requires access to a large reservoir of sampling data. Sampling intensively across a vast coastal landscape, however, is expensive in both effort and funds. 

But many vessels—tugboats, ferries, cruise and container ships—are already plying these waters regularly as they go about their daily duties. Partnering with industries that are already on the water is a valuable and productive way to close gaps in ocean data collection.

The Seaspan Royal “vessel of opportunity” program was an innovative partnership between the Hakai Institute, Seaspan and British Columbia's provincial government, in which the Seaspan Royal tugboat was outfitted with a suite of oceanographic instruments to gather data on ocean acidification, hypoxia, and marine ecology. 

Learn more or inquire about partnership opportunities.

Partners

The Hakai Institute oversaw instrument installation and data collection, and provided funding for a variety of instruments to measure atmospheric and seawater carbon dioxide, dissolved oxygen, temperature and salinity.

Based in North Vancouver, Seaspan is the dominant marine transportation company serving the west coast of North America. Seaspan's large tugboat and barge fleet hauls forestry materials, minerals, railcars, machinery, fuel, and supplies to coastal communities including the west coasts of Vancouver Island and Haida Gwaii. 

Seaspan provided significant in-kind support via installation of the instruments (requiring through-hull penetrations), as well as maintenance and troubleshooting. They also provided vessel access, including transport to the ship in remote locations.

The British Columbia provincial government provided funding for additional instrumentation to measure dissolved inorganic carbon.  

Timeframe

Data collection spanned July 2022 to October 2023.  

Context

The Seaspan Royal project carried on a tradition of using vessels of opportunity in BC waters, dating to the 2012 installation of instruments on three BC Ferries routes by Ocean Networks Canada. 

From 2017 to 2020, the Hakai Institute gathered oceanographic data from instruments on the Alaska ferry M/V Columbia as the ship traveled its tourist-season route between Bellingham, Washington and Skagway, Alaska. One of the outcomes was this research paper on marine carbon dioxide variability in the Inside Passage.

The partnership with Seaspan allowed the Hakai Institute to expand its geographic and temporal scope, since every month of the year the Seaspan Royal traversed a 2000-kilometer route that included the waters west of Haida Gwaii and Vancouver Island.

Utilizing vessels of opportunity is part of Hakai's larger ocean acidification initiative, which includes regional, national, and international partners from academia, government agencies, and the private sector. Among many other contributions, Hakai Institute researchers were pivotal in the creation of the British Columbia Ocean Acidification and Hypoxia Action Plan released in 2023.

Outcomes

Thus far the project has made data submissions to the Surface Ocean CO2 Atlas, and the generated data supports the assessment of the ocean carbon sink in the Global Carbon Budget for both 2022 and 2023. Several other results utilizing the data are in the works.

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