Marine facilities

NERC provides access to a range of marine facilities in support of marine science including research ships, technicians and marine science equipment.

The marine facilities web pages mainly detail ship-time and ship facilities. In addition to this, NERC also runs the National Facility for Scientific Diving.

Scientists who have secured funding from NERC, or from a non-NERC peer-reviewed source (for example, the European Union or the National Science Foundation in the US) or from commissioned research, can bid to NERC for 'free at the point of use' access to its ships* and equipment support facilities.

Researchers bidding for ship time or marine equipment need to speak to Marine Planning to discuss their requirements prior to submission of their online Ship-time & Marine Equipment (SME) application form. The primary purpose of this is to provide advice and resolve issues such as ensuring a realistic start date (which will affect cost indexation), inclusion of all relevant costs, confirmation that NERC can supply the required capability, etc, prior to submission of the SME rather than after it. Without such a discussion, it is possible that NERC will not be able to include a cruise in the NERC Marine Facilities Programme. For this purpose, the Marine Planning contact is Dr Beth Woodward.

Information on current bids to use NERC marine facilities and the cruise programme can be found on the Marine Facilities Planning website.

All general enquiries regarding our marine facilities should be directed to:

Dr Beth Woodward
Marine Planning Officer
Natural Environment Research Council
Polaris House, North Star Avenue
Swindon, SN2 1EU
Tel: 01793 442597

* This is the case for all ships except the research ship, Prince Madog.

Marine facilities

Related links

External links