[Music plays]
(Max McGuire) Welcome to the bridge on Investigator,
my name’s Max McGuire and I work for the MNF.
I am the voyage manager onboard investigator at the moment.
At the moment as I said we’re standing in the bridge.
This is the heart and soul of Investigator.
This is where we can control the navigational movements of the ship,
as well as every aspect and every system onboard the ship.
This is the main control panel on Investigator.
Ah, there’s lots of buttons, lots of screens, it looks very complicated
but essentially it’s very easy.
Starting with the engine controls, they move the ship around as well the bow thruster.
The rudder controls are here as well to steer the vessel.
A lot of communication devices for both internally around the ship
and externally talking to other ships in the area.
It’s a very busy place when we’re underway
and again certainly probably the most important part of the bridge.
[Music plays]
There’s seven decks above the main deck on board the ship
and this is my cabin. I’m lucky I’ve got a very big space,
a nice big office as well as my sleeping quarters as being the voyage manager.
It’s a new cabin, it’s a new ship
and it’s probably one of the greatest things being onboard Investigator
is that everything is brand new.
The voyage manager’s cabin is very comfortable.
It’s plenty big, I’ve got a nice big single bed
and lots of cupboard space. It is a comfortable cabin. It’s a lovely big ship.
[Music plays]
Welcome to the aft main deck of Investigator. This is one of our containerised labs,
come and have a look inside.
Investigator has space for thirteen containerised facilities onboard
and this one lives on the aft deck, it is the trace metal clean laboratory.
[Music plays]
Welcome to the operations room
located on the main deck of investigator.
Down here we monitor all the collection of data taken by investigator.
With me today is Dr Tara Martin.
(Tara Martin) Hi Max.
(Max McGuire) Thanks Tara and exactly what are we doing down here?
(Tara Martin) We’re mapping the sea bed down here.
We’re doing that with remote sensing
because we don’t want to have to go for a swim every time we want to see what’s on the sea floor.
So we do that with sonar.
We’re sending sound pulses through the water
and that hits the bottom, comes back to us and we measure the time it takes to come back.
By doing this with a whole lot of beams we can map the sea floor in three dimensions
in very high resolution.
This is the data that we’ve acquired through the night
and we can look at that in two dimensions and three dimensions.
This helps us process the data and interpret the data as we’re going.
(Max McGuire) And what are we looking at on this screen?
(Tara Martin) This is a very exciting instrument.
Very few ships in the world have one of these yet.
This is a multi-beam, multi-frequency fisheries sonar.
And this gives us a large number of beams that look through the water column
and let us measure schools of fish
in real-time in three dimensions.
[Music plays]
(Max McGuire) Investigator is capable of being at sea for extended periods.
For up to 60 people at one time, that’s a lot of mouths to feed.
This is one of three refrigerated areas on board to cater for all those hungry souls.
[Music plays]
Thanks for coming on the tour with me and now it’s time for dinner.
[Music plays]