Research ships and supporting facilities
Ships
NERC owns and operates the research ships the RRS Discovery and RRS James Cook and has access to 60 days a year on the RRS James Clark Ross operated by BAS. The RV Prince Madog is a recognised NERC facility operated by VT Ocean Sciences and is run on a 'pay-as-you-go' basis.
As well as owning and running some of the most well known research ships in the world we provide access to a range of other marine facilities.
NMF Sea Systems and the National Marine Equipment Pool
NMF Sea Systems provide technical services including staff and the National Marine Equipment Pool (NMEP) to the NERC marine facilities programme.
Although applications for these services will normally be considered integrally to a bid for a NERC cruise, applications for NMF Sea Systems services may be made separately; this is especially important for specialised facilities such as the moorings team which are not always connected to a specific cruise.
Non-NERC marine facilities
NERC has an agreement with IFREMER (France), Institute of Marine Research (IMR) and the University of Bergen (UoB)(Norway), BMBF (Germany), NIOZ (the Netherlands) and CSIC (Spain) for barter exchange of a wide range of marine facilities. A similar bilateral arrangement exists with the US National Science Foundation (NSF).
These arrangements allow NERC-funded scientists to have access to marine equipment and facilities which cannot be provided by NERC, or to run cruises in remote geographical areas which are not due to be visited by NERC ships in the required year.
Detailed information about the barter arrangements is available.
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