SAMS news room

Today (Thursday) saw the first dive from the new diving support boat Glaucus, a six-metre RIB that arrived at the SAMS-based National Facility for Scientific Diving (NFSD) this week.

Putting the new boat straight to work, the dive team took Glaucus to Ardmucknish Bay, near Benderloch, to replace temperature loggers that are currently providing a time series for water temperature  in the area going back 22 years.

Glaucus is fully MCA coded to take four passengers and crew and can be transported by road, allowing the scientific diving team to work from locations that could previously not be supported by our main diving boat Tritonia.

Dr Martin Sayer, Head of the NFSD, said: “This new boat increases our capacity and flexibility of our diving work.

“With two coded vessels we can now operate separate diving operations simultaneously, while the fact that Glaucus can be moved by road allows us to work in locations outside of the coded range of Tritonia.”

Funding for the new boat was from a successful NERC Services and Facilities capital bid.